My Own Worst Enemy
by Xyta
Summary: [incomplete] Terra held her breath – it was evident that X hadn’t noticed her looking at him just yet. Maybe, just maybe, she could pretend to be sleeping and avoid whatever confrontation he wanted to initiate. [RobStar, XStar, BBTerra, BBRae]
1. Terra

A/N: I don't know how long this is going to end up being. Probably very long. A few notes to get through at the beginning here, and then I promise I won't bug you with author's notes ever again.

This story is set a while after the ending of the series. Let's say that our heroes (and villains) are roughly 17 years old, give or take. Not much older, but enough so to incorporate a few more mature themes.

Warnings: Plenty to go around before we get started. First off, bad language. Not so much in this chapter—just one curse, if I remember correctly. Later on, once the real bad guys start getting involved, it'll get much worse.

Secondly, the pairings. There are and will be plenty of different pairings featured at different points in this story. Quickly listing the ones I have currently planned—Robin & Starfire, Red X & Starfire, Beast Boy & Terra, and Beast Boy & Raven. I don't have any plans for Cyborg yet, but I don't want to leave him out, so for now the only romantic information I can give you on him is that I've got something in the works. That can't really be revealed until I get a bit further into the plot, though. Sorry.

Lastly, I'm very much experimenting with my writing style in this fic. You can therefore expect to see some odd things thrown in here throughout. Nothing _too_ odd, but some differences here and there.

I really hope you guys enjoy this. I've worked hard on it and I have a very solid 'universe' set up for the Titans in this fic. Without further ado, here you go—enjoy the first chapter. Don't forget to review. :)

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**My Own Worst Enemy**  
Chapter 1 – _Terra_

The hour was late, and summer was dying fast. The air was cool enough to bring a chill along with it when a lazy breeze sauntered past Red X.

The adolescent thief couldn't help shivering slightly when the cold air blew past him, rousing his charcoal cape around his body as it did so. His altitude undoubtedly had a hand in the degree of the temperature change—he was standing atop the highest building in Jump's center, carefully eyeing an unmarked van while it pulled slowly away from the city's largest bank.

His face wore a small smirk in spite of the fact that no one could see it; even if there was somebody around him, his stolen mask would block any onlooker's view of his expression. His stance, for once, was nonchalant—one arm dangled casually at his side, the other placed uncaringly on his hip—while he stared downward at the van far below him. In his right hand, his fingers absently toyed with a red shuriken while his brain worked at the possible angles he could take in the heist he was about to pull.

Several nights had gone by now the same way for the thief. Shortly after nightfall nearly a week ago, he'd come to this rooftop, looking down on the very same target he was monitoring tonight. Since then, every night had been the same—the van always pulled up at the same time, took roughly the same amount of time to load, and used the same route on its way out of the inner city with the excess deposits from the reputable bank.

When he first began watching this nightly journey, X had told himself that he would allow at least two weeks of observation to pass before he would attempt to interfere with the systematic transportation. Two weeks, at the time, had seemed like a sufficient amount of time to study the pattern and plan for any unexpected occurrences. Now he was six nights into it and he'd already grown bored with waiting. Tonight would be the night he would become a few thousand dollars richer.

The van traveled a block or so from the bank it was leaving behind. X stepped almost automatically toward the edge of the building, keeping his eyes trained on his target. His fingers flexed subconsciously, holding the shuriken between them. His muscles slightly tensed; he prepared to hurl the small, X-shaped weapon downward toward one of the van's tires, having boundless confidence in his aim even from this high above his focus. He'd gone through this scenario several times in his mind—pop a tire or two, shoot a sharpened X down from his palm using the power of the xenothium in his suit, and presto: the van would be in two perfect halves in no time. A quick teleport down to knock out the guards would give him all the time he'd need to grab what he wanted and make his exit before the neighborhood superheroes were on his trail.

Just as he was readying himself to throw the first X-shaped device, he thought he heard a footstep behind him. The thief froze, darting his eyes toward his shoulder without turning his head to see who had appeared behind him. At the angle he was currently positioned, it was impossible for him to see behind him without turning; still, he was unwilling to give up his plan so soon. A small, invisible smirk made its way onto his face while he silently weighed his options. He still had enough time to turn around and take out whoever was trying to sneak up on him before his opportunity to hit the truck with a clear shot would completely pass him by. Alternatively, he could ignore them altogether and proceed with his operation as planned—he would simply need to concern himself with escaping from said assailant rather than simply making off unnoticeably into the night.

A few seconds of consideration passed before X settled on the former choice—running away wasn't his style, after all. His arm remained tense in preparation to throw; instead of throwing the shuriken downward, however, he whirled about to hurl it toward whoever had attempted to sneak up behind him. When he turned, he wasn't met with the image of a Teen Titan as he'd expected to be. Instead, he caught a very quick but clear view of a large piece of iron swinging straight toward his face. Automatically, his eyes went wide.

_Whack!_

After that, everything went dark.

¸ o ´ o ¸ o ´

"Ugh…"

Blurry vision didn't reveal much of anything; it was a realization that X would rather not have had to come to.

He was in pain. So much physical pain, and not just in his head—in his entire body. The right side of his forehead was throbbing almost unbearably; the memory of the large, metal object that hit him was clear enough in his mind to explain the reason behind that. An attempt to bring a hand to his forehead to massage away some of the pain was abruptly stopped by a strange jerking sensation in his aching arm.

Blinking, he strained to look up, suddenly realizing that both his arms were stretched above him. They were tied together at the wrist and attached to the ceiling with a steel cable in a knot that a Boy Scout would have been proud of. Glancing downward, he found that his legs were tied to the ground in a similar fashion; he was dangling in the middle of the room, suddenly completely aware of the pain in his arms from supporting his full body weight while he was unconscious. He wasn't sure how long it had been, but judging by the ache in each of his limbs, a considerable amount of time had passed since he'd been spying on the van traveling the streets several stories below him.

X quickly tried to assess the situation the best he could through the excruciating sting searing through his mind. Whoever it was who had snuck up on him on the rooftop hadn't intended to stop him from committing a burglary. He was obviously a prisoner, now, for one reason or another—and judging by the lengths the attacker had gone to in tying him up, the person was aware of his reputation as a skillful escape artist. He glanced to his waist, groaning in annoyance when he saw that the belt that powered his suit was missing. "Great."

He grumbled a few choice words to himself, looking back up to the cables that held his wrists while he attempted to sway his body to test the slack given by the cords tying him to the ceiling and floor. Another exasperated groan escaped his throat; it wasn't much, certainly not enough to help him escape in any way.

"Just great." The villain heaved a quick sigh, next straining to look at the floor while he tried to wiggle his ankles free from the knot they were tangled in. Again, he had no luck. He was beginning to get frustrated. "What did I do?" he mumbled to himself, pulling his eyes toward the room he was suspended in with hopes of finding something useful at least relatively near.

"You didn't do anything."

The feminine voice came from behind him; X cursed under his breath, craning his neck in an unsuccessful attempt to look over his shoulder. Still, he narrowed his eyes, hoping that he looked at least somewhat menacing in the helpless position he was currently in. "Who are you?" he demanded, wincing mildly when he heard his tone. Even through the voice distorter built into his mask—or perhaps _especially_ through it—he sounded more like Robin than he ever would have wanted to.

The girl seemed to have caught this, as well, or at least found humor in some form at what he said; she laughed a low, unfriendly chuckle when she heard his voice through the device he spoke through. "No one of any importance," she said dismissively. Her tone was unsurprisingly just as inhospitable as her laugh had been.

X heard her footsteps while she began to walk around him, coming into his view in a matter of seconds. She was a tall girl, and very thin, with long blond hair and large blue eyes. She wore an outfit that was very ugly, in his opinion—half of her body was dressed in black, while the other half donned a detestable shade of orange. "What are you supposed to be, Halloween Girl?" he droned sarcastically against his better judgment—generally, it wasn't a good idea for one to taunt his captor when in such a precarious position. "No, let me guess—Princess Pumpkin."

The teenager didn't seem fazed by his remarks; she only smirked, lowering her head slightly to give him a more sinister stare. X was slightly disturbed to notice an eerie golden glint as it passed quickly across her eyes. It appeared only for an instant—the anti-hero wondered for a moment if he was losing his mind.

She took no notice of the surprised widening of his eyes; the mask did well to cover up the change in his expression. "It's comments like that that end up making my job ten times easier, you know," she said pointedly. He didn't like the snide tone in her voice, but the worry she'd inadvertently caused him with the shine in her eyes stopped him from retorting as he normally would have. "It's easy to kill someone you don't even like."

_Kill?_ X's mind echoed the key word while he blinked stupidly at the tiny girl in front of him. "_You're_ going to kill _me_?" he blurted, sounding much more disbelieving than he'd intended to. Her eyes narrowed slightly; he found himself unable to suppress an uncharacteristically loud, bellowing laugh. Granted, he wasn't in the best position in the world to be laughing at _anyone_ who claimed they would end his life—but still, the thought of his demise being brought about by such a skinny teenage girl was completely unbelievable. "How old are you, kid?"

The smirk on her face had dimmed to an uninviting scowl. "Probably older than you think," she snapped, lifting her hands in front of her face so that her palms were stretched toward him.

She couldn't see it, but he was still smiling in amusement, watching with interest while she prepared to do whatever it was she was going to do to him. One corner of her mouth twitched upward into a devious grin; his hidden expression faltered as her eyes and hands once again began to emit the spine-chilling yellow glow he'd thought he'd seen a moment ago.

"And I guarantee I'm stronger than you think."

He felt the cords tying his arms to the ceiling subtly tense. The sensation was followed quickly by a loud cracking sound. X bit his lip hard, suddenly intensely wishing he hadn't said anything to make this girl angry. An instant later, a large chunk of rock fell from the ceiling, landing roughly two yards away from the captured thief. The rock annihilated a table that had happened to be in its path. Another loud crunch sounded from the collision; a cloud of dirt and dust quickly rose around the pile of rocks that now adorned the center of the room.

X swallowed thickly, moving his eyes from the wreckage to the now normal-looking teenager before him. She flipped a lock of hair casually over her shoulder, tossing him a quick smirk before beginning to walk toward the other end of the room.

"I'm a geomancer," she said while she walked, not so much as glancing over her shoulder—though she wasn't completely oblivious to his stunned expression, hidden as it may have been. "This room was carved out of a mountainside. There's plenty of rock above and beneath us."

She left her statement at that; he watched nervously as she neared a computer console attached to a large monitor along the far wall. Without his belt to supply the xenothium for his suit, he knew that he was as good as dead. _I've gotta get out of here._

"I need you alive for a few more minutes, though," the girl continued, punching a sequence of keys into the computer. X probed the room, searching for a glimpse of anything that might be any help to him. "We've got a broadcast to make."

"Broadcast?" the thief repeated dumbly. His eyes finally locked on to an item that would be of use to him—his belt was draped carelessly across the top of the computer console the girl was using. X cursed to himself, narrowing his eyes at the object. _If only you were twenty-five or so feet closer. Not that I can exactly reach out and grab you at the moment,_ he added as an afterthought, beginning to feel especially stupid for engaging in a silent dialogue with his belt, of all things.

The blond was unknowing of his inner confliction. "Yep. I've gotta get in touch with some friends of yours." She continued to type into the keyboard until a large, blue display of the simple word "Connecting" appeared on the screen. Then, she stepped back in satisfaction, placing one hand on her hip while throwing a glance over her shoulder toward the anti-hero dangling behind her. "Turns out, you're the perfect bait to lure my favorite team of superheroes to inevitable doom."

X chose to keep his rebuttals to himself. Instead, he directed his eyes toward the screen, watching it snap to a scene of normal television snow before showing him a picture of five surprised-looking heroes.

¸ o ´ o ¸ o ´

"I have you! I _so_ have you!"

"No way, man! I have _never_ lost at this game to you, and I'm not about to start now!"

Beast Boy and Cyborg were intensely battling each other in one of Cyborg's favorite racing games, and, surprisingly, Beast Boy was well in the lead. The half-robot was quick to blame various outside elements, ranging from his lack of sleep the night before to the bad weather they'd been having in Jump City lately, for his poor performance in the first two laps of the race. Now that they were on the third and final lap, Cyborg was beginning to panic. Losing at any video game to Beast Boy was certainly not one of his favorite pastimes—much less a game he considered himself to be one of the best in the world at.

The pair of gamers was seated in the center of the C-shaped sofa in the operations room, facing the television screen directly while they each jerked their bodies in conjunction with the movement of the cars they controlled in the virtual racing world. Raven was sitting off to the left of Beast Boy, a thick, multi-chaptered book in her hands. Her eyes, however, were glued to the screen; even the empath who had declared herself anti-Gamestation on many occasions had to appreciate the fact that history was unfolding before her very eyes. Beast Boy had _never_ beaten Cyborg—at _any_ game, as far as she could remember—and to watch such an event as it was happening was appealing even to her.

Behind the couch, Starfire was poised in the air, her emerald eyes shining with excitement and her fists clenched eagerly before her hovering form. "Go, Beast Boy!" she cheered, absolutely thrilled to be watching such an incredible event. It was true that she didn't understand the concept of video games in general very well, but she definitely understood the thrill of victory. Day after day, she watched her small, green friend dejectedly trudge away from the television with watery eyes and huge frown upon his face. Now was his chance to rise above his constant defeater and conquer him, once and for all! The alien princess was overjoyed by the changeling's chance to turn fate around on their robotic teammate.

A bit further behind her, the team's leader was seated in the kitchen area of the room, watching in mild amusement along with the rest of the group while the epic race unfolded on the screen. The small smile his lips wore was more due to Starfire's excitement than Beast Boy's historic opportunity to beat Cyborg at a racing game—after all, Robin did it all the time. Still, it was cute to see her get so excited about something so trivial that she usually cared so little about. It simply went further to prove to him that she truly was the team's biggest supporter: she was always there to cheer someone on, no matter how indifferent she normally was toward whatever task she was supporting for her teammate.

The distance to the finish line was dwindling quickly, and Beast Boy's car was still well ahead of Cyborg's. The changeling's grin was growing wider by the second. "I'm gonna win!" he professed, rising to his feet to jump excitedly on the couch cushion; Cyborg gritted his teeth and made restrained growling noises in a futile attempt to mentally will his virtual car to go faster.

"Hooray for our friend Beast Boy!" Starfire cheered, clasping her hands together and spiraling joyously into the air. Robin couldn't help chuckling to himself; Raven lowered the book before her face another inch, her jaw growing slightly slack at the sight of Beast Boy's car approaching the finish line. He would have the race in the bag in another few seconds…

The picture of the game suddenly cut away, drawing a horrified gasp from each of the Titans (save for Robin, who truly couldn't have cared less). "No!" Beast Boy wailed, falling face-first onto the ground in complete dismay.

"All right!" Cyborg cheered, raising his controller into the air as though he was declared the automatic victor. "My legacy lives on, baby! Yeah!"

Raven's eyes narrowed slightly at her robotic teammate before she returned the book to its proper position before her face. "That hardly counts as continuing your legacy," she cynically remarked. "Beast Boy would have won if the game didn't…"

She trailed off, returning her stare to the screen as an odd, fuzzy picture began to come onto it. Robin, as well, focused his stare at the image that was beginning to form on the television. "Someone's tapping into our communications frequency," he realized aloud, his stare quickly turning to a glare as he pushed himself away from the kitchen counter, moving to stand next to Starfire's floating form while he and the others waited for the picture to come into focus.

The image was instantly recognizable. Starfire gasped in shock, the first of the five to make any sound at all; she threw her hands up over her mouth while her eyes widened dramatically at the sight before them. "No way," Raven said quietly, lowering the book in her hands until it sat in her lap. Robin and Cyborg simply went bug-eyed at the smirk the teens were met with. Beast Boy was the only one to shout at the picture as Robin had intended to do if the face of a known enemy of theirs had popped up for them to see.

"_Terra?_"

The changeling dropped the Gamestation controller he was holding; the smirk on the blonde's face never faltered. "Glad you still remember my name," she said smoothly, an obvious hint of sarcasm in her tone.

"I—how could—why—" Beast Boy stuttered, unable to form a thought complete enough to express to the girl on the screen in front of him. Fortunately, not all of the young heroes were as dumbfounded as Beast Boy; Raven quickly replaced the look of surprise on her face with an unpalatable scowl. Before she could so much as open her mouth, however, the ex-Titan on the screen stated the answer to the very accusing question the empath was about to ask.

"I'm sure you can tell by what I'm wearing that this isn't a request for a friendly reunion," the girl remarked, gesturing lightly toward the orange-and-black color theme of her outfit. Robin's eyes narrowed at her; she pretended not to notice. "I've been instructed to contact you because I happened to have come across someone who might be of interest to you."

"Don't think for a second that we're going to bargain with you," the boy wonder stated warningly. Cyborg and Raven, in turn, nodded their heads; Starfire simply continued to glare at the screen, and Beast Boy was still too flabbergasted to do anything.

Terra only laughed in response. "This isn't a bargain. It's very cut-and-dry, actually. Behind me, lacking his all-powerful belt and bound by steel cables, is the notorious thief you five have been after for a few years now." She paused, stepping away to give the Titans a view of her captive—there he was, just as she'd described, looking particularly angered by his helpless position. "The deal is simple. Get here within one hour and he's yours. You can do what you'd like with him—take him to jail, torture him, or make him a member of your team, for all I care."

"And if we don't?" Robin prodded, crossing his arms haughtily over his chest. He knew that they'd be there—there was no way that they could let a criminal with such an extensive wanted record slip through their fingers when he was in such a vulnerable condition. Still, she was clearly working for his greatest enemy; he couldn't give the man such satisfaction as knowing that he had the Titans right where he wanted them.

Nonchalantly, the blonde shrugged, shifting her position in front of the camera so that Red X was no longer visible behind her. "Then I'll take care of him for you," she said simply, her blue eyes staring forebodingly into the camera to get the implication across. X was hoping that she could let the threat go unspoken, but Robin was never very good with subtleties.

"You mean you're going to kill him?" the boy wonder blurted in surprise; X wished that he could smack his forehead in exasperation.

Terra, seemingly, was experiencing a similar feeling. She sighed in disgust at Robin's blatant remark while Starfire once again gasped in shock. "You always were the smart one," the geomancer commented sarcastically, typing a few keys on her keyboard while she spoke. "I've downloaded my location into your computer. You've got one hour."

With that, her image promptly cut away from them, the picture of the racing game popping almost instantly back onto the screen. Beast Boy's car had crashed into a lamppost on the side of the virtual road; Cyborg's, meanwhile, had traveled the entire straight-shot distance to the finish line, thus making him the winner of the race.

All five of them simply stared at the screen for a few seconds until Cyborg's booming voice gleefully filled the room.

"Booyah!"

¸ o ´ o ¸ o ´

The image of the teenage heroes showed them to be just as surprised when it vanished as when it appeared. Darkness once again enveloped the room when the screen dimmed; X was only barely able to see the reflection of a faint light that shone off of Terra's blonde hair. Still, he could see her well enough to tell that she hadn't turned to face him when she next began to speak.

"The deal with the Titans I just made is meaningless. I'm sure you already knew that."

A few strained seconds of silence passed before the thief let himself come to terms to what she was implying. "Why didn't you just kill me on the rooftop, then?" he asked nonchalantly, surprising even himself with the uncaring tone he used in his questioning.

Casually, the girl flipped a lock of blonde hair over her shoulder, turning her head toward him; he could barely make out the small smirk that had graced her lips. "I needed to keep you alive to show to them. What sort of bargain would I be making if all I had to offer was your mangled corpse?"

Subconsciously, X cringed at her word choice. He'd never liked the words "mangled" or "corpse" being used in any way when in reference to himself.

"They've seen you, now," the teenager continued, her smirk deepening while her ice blue eyes narrowed at his imprisoned form. "Meaning, from this point forward, you're useless to me. Every second you're alive is a second you should consider yourself lucky for."

The girl lifted a hand before her face before the thief could so much as think of a retort. An eerie yellow glow quickly encased it; X felt the ceiling above him shake unsteadily.

"Sadly, today doesn't seem to be your lucky day."

A tremendous crack sounded above him. Panicked, X did the only thing he could think of: he quickly swung his body weight in a desperate attempt to dodge the rocks from falling atop his helpless body. As the ceiling began to collapse, the cable that held his arms in place went with it. The anti-hero fell off to the side, yelping in pain when the rocks from above him crashed down onto his legs. A horrified gasp followed from the ex-Titan across the room. X's pulse quickened; he knew he'd managed to throw her off guard, at least.

Once they were free from the tension provided by the ceiling, the thief found the steel cables much easier to remove from his wrists. He was quickly able to slip out of them and sweep the debris that had fallen atop him aside to free his legs as well. The sound of shifting earth came from above him once more; X quickly rolled to the side to avoid being hit with another mass of rocks from the top of the makeshift cavern.

"Stop that!" Terra shouted at him, irritation plainly audible in her voice. The criminal ignored her, narrowing his eyes at the device he knew he desperately needed—the belt that was still sitting on the computer beside her—instead of bothering to think up a clever comeback. He needed that belt if he had any hope to make it out of here alive. Luck, he was aware, could only carry him so far.

A crumbling sound beneath his feet snapped him out of his thoughts; he jumped aside just in time to avoid falling into a newly formed hole in the ground. The geomancer cursed at him quietly before hurling a few boulders from the pile she'd recently collapsed in his direction. X was able to dodge two of them and smack the third aside. Without giving her time to pick up more, the thief ran straight toward the girl, keeping his eyes on his goal and silently praying that she wasn't fast enough to hit him before he reached the belt.

Her eyes, in turn, widened with the realization of what he was after. "Don't even think about it!" she shouted, raising her glowing hands before her. He barely even heard her—the thief mindlessly dodged the rocks she hurdled toward him as they came. The distance between the two of them grew ever smaller; X readied his arm to forcibly knock her aside when he reached her.

As he grew closer, the geomancer lifted her hands toward the ceiling. A loud crack resulted; the thief quickly realized that the girl could easily ward off the falling rocks from her own body if she brought the whole room down atop him. Just as suddenly as the thought entered his mind, X pushed it away—he hardly had time for worries at this point. The belt was so close—just past her, now—and all he needed was a few more seconds…

As planned, the criminal shoved the tiny blonde aside, snatching his belt off of the computer next to where she'd stood in a heartbeat. An instant later, he was struck in the side of the head with a small boulder. X fell to the ground, somewhat dazed, while Terra pushed herself to her feet, her blue eyes filled with the hope that the boulder had effectively rendered the thief unconscious. When she caught sight of him, she wasn't met with the sprawled, unconscious form she'd wanted to see. Instead, she saw his eyes narrow from behind his mask just before his image vanished from her sight.

"_Shit!_" the tiny girl cursed loudly, whirling around to see where he'd teleported to. Her eyes only met with darkness; he was nowhere to be seen. "This isn't part of the plan! What am I supposed to do?"

Her panicked voice echoed through the empty cavern without a response from the rocky walls. X was pressed hard against a darkened corner, holding his breath to avoid being detected. He had his belt back now—he was positive that he could get out of here alive. He surmised that he still had a good forty-five minutes before the Titans would arrive to presumably collect him for the police.

He knew that it was wrong, but watching her panicked expression while her eyes darted back and forth within the empty cavern only convinced him that he needed to stay and torture her for at least a while more. He only had to be gone within forty-five minutes.

The anti-hero smirked to himself, teleporting briefly to a spot just behind the girl and tapping her on the shoulder. She gasped loudly and whirled about, glowing hands poised instantly before her face, but by the time she was facing him he had once again disappeared. The geomancer's blue eyes darted fretfully around her petite form. With the teleportation power provided by the xenothium, he could be anywhere. _Anywhere_. X's supercilious voice sounded snidely from somewhere behind her, sending a nervous chill down her spine while she continued to search for him in the dimly-lit room.

"Now, I'm going to show you why I like this belt so much."


	2. Gone

A/N: I know I said no more notes, but I have to throw in another warning really quickly at the beginning of this chapter. I sort of took used the infamous author's license with regards to "_Things Change"_ and Terra's memory loss. Also, I'm bad with fight scenes. Working on it, but yeah…let me know if it doesn't come across neatly and I'll try and clean it up a bit.

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**My Own Worst Enemy**  
_Chapter 2 – Gone_

The hawk absently beat its wings against the cool twilight air, oblivious to the biting wind that threatened to freeze its jade feathers off. He glided unnaturally effortlessly through the air while his mind was light-years away. More precisely, it was two years away—two years in the past, reliving a memory he'd tried again and again to banish forever.

Still, it was as clear to him as the night's sky that was beginning to emerge against the orange and red sunset. He could remember every detail about that hallway—every book she held in her arms while she walked away from him for what he'd thought would be the last time.

"_Things change, Beast Boy. The girl you want me to be is just a memory."_

He shivered, even in his hawk's form, shaking his head furiously in an attempt to clear his mind. Still, her frowning face wouldn't leave it. He could still see her slowly backing away from him, becoming lost in the halls of that school—the one she'd chosen to attend rather than return to the tower along with him.

He had thought that he would never see her again. But it was her—he had no doubt of it. Those sapphire eyes couldn't possibly belong to anyone else. She was the same girl as he'd seen in the schoolyard that day two years ago, only now she was dressed in a black-and-orange ensemble he'd never expected to see her in again.

_Terra._

How could it be her? How could she have possibly gone back to Slade before returning to the Titans? He felt cold, but not because of the weather. He felt betrayed, and not for the first time, by the likes of the golden-haired geomancer haunting his mind at the moment.

Beast Boy didn't want to believe it. He wished that his brain was gullible enough against its own methods that he could fool himself into thinking that perhaps it wasn't Terra who had broken into their communications line back at the tower. He wanted to doubt. For the first time he could remember, he was honestly wishing that he was as stupid as his teammates sometimes perceived him to be.

If he was stupid, he could have tricked himself into thinking it wasn't her.

_Maybe it was a bionic monkey infused with Terra's DNA._ He had to laugh at himself at the thought, his hawk's beak emitting a strange-sounding squawk as a weak relay of the chuckle.

He was disappointed by the sound, oddly enough. Birds couldn't laugh. But then again, birds couldn't cry. The changeling knew that, if his eyes could form tears in their current state, he would have long been crying by now.

His mind slowly drifted back into reality; it suddenly occurred to him that Raven and Starfire had been flying far below him and he hadn't bothered to check their location for quite a while. Glancing downward, he was relieved to find that they hadn't stopped somewhere without him. He was still on track with finding Terra.

The thought crossed his mind and brought a slight feeling of disappointment along with it. Part of him didn't want to see her. If he was ever going to see her again, he'd imagined it as a much less confrontational event—maybe even with smiles and laughter and hugs. A kiss, too, if he was lucky. A part of him dreaded actually laying eyes on her in that wretched outfit yet another time. The first time she'd worn it had been traumatic enough—for the both of them, he would have guessed.

He realized with a remorseful sigh that he must not have been guessing properly these past few years.

At the same time, he wanted to see her more than anything in the world. He wanted to ask her, face to face, what she'd been doing all this time. He wanted to know why she hadn't returned to him before going to the evil genius she once called master. He wanted to get answers for all of the questions running through his mind straight from the mouth of the girl he thought he had lost forever.

Even now, she may be lost forever.

Beast Boy often hated the way his mind worked. Sometimes, it was next to impossible to settle with a happy thought without finding a reason it might be nothing but false hope he was trying to cling to.

_Good thing I don't have to use Star's powers to fly. I'd never get off the ground._

Speaking (or at least thinking) of Starfire… Beast Boy looked downward once more, noticing that the girls were beginning to fly downward toward a clearing on the hillside beneath them. Following suit, the changeling banked his wings to the right, beginning a large, downward spiral that he planned to enjoy to its fullest before he landed beside them on the mountain below.

The teenagers below him landed much sooner than he did; Raven pulled her hood off of her head with one hand the instant she set foot on the ground, glancing at the communicator she held in the other to confirm their location. "These are the coordinates," the empath informed her alien teammate, her voice carrying a grim tone along with it. "She should be right along this mountain."

The girls both glanced around, seeing nothing that remotely resembled a building. Raven bit her lip in an uncharacteristic display of uncertainty.

"Somewhere," she added as an afterthought.

"Our friend Terra has the power to move the earth, does she not?" Starfire suggested, her viridian eyes probing the hillside for anything that she might mistake as a door. "Perhaps she is located within the mountain itself."

Raven shrugged, unable to write off the possibility, and moved her eyes to the sky to watch the finale of Beast Boy's descent. Her heart filled with an unfamiliar feeling that she either couldn't or didn't want to place while she watched the green bird glide toward them. She quickly wrote it off as an uncontrollable effect of her powers—surely Beast Boy was experiencing such a dejected feeling in his own heart, and by looking at him Raven had merely absorbed this feeling into her own being.

_Don't I usually have to touch someone to get into their head?_

The question her mind posed effectively caused an inadvertent twitch in the empath's eyebrow.

_Not if I'm using my soul-self,_ she reminded herself, breathing out a quiet sigh once she felt she'd justified the odd feeling she continued to experience.

…_But I'm not._

Raven scowled, pulling her eyes away from the changeling and returning them to the side of the mountain they stood upon. "I can sense her. It's definitely Terra. And Red X is definitely in there with her."

"Wonderful," Starfire said with a smile in a voice that lacked her usual cheeriness. Grabbing and flipping open her communicator all in one fluid motion, she brought the device to her face, merely watching while Robin's image appeared on it. "We have arrived at the location," she reported, trying a more convincing smile for the image of herself he was surely presented with. Robin could read her well, after all, and she was more concerned about appearing confident for him than for Raven. With Raven's powers, it would be hard to deceive her while such an intense feeling of sadness plagued the girl's emotions.

Robin's face was halfway covered by the helmet he wore; he was riding his R-cycle toward the location mapped by Terra through the tower's computer and probably not even looking at the small screen on the "dashboard" of the vehicle. "Great work," he said automatically—thus assuring Starfire that her poised display was going completely unnoticed. "You guys can go ahead in and get X if you want to. Just be prepared for a fight; Slade could be in there, and I don't want anyone getting hurt."

Starfire peeked at Raven, who had returned to staring at Beast Boy's continually floating form; the alien girl bit her lip uncertainly. "I believe Raven would have mentioned sensing Slade within the mountain," she offered uneasily, unwilling to break Raven from her thoughts to ask her to try sensing his presence again.

Robin tersely darted his eyes toward the screen momentarily before returning them to the road before them. "Okay. Use your best judgment, then. We'll be there soon."

His image promptly cut away from her; Starfire sighed, clipping the communicator back to her belt and turning her green eyes to the air just in time to watch Beast Boy arch his wings into a short dive toward the rocky surface of the mountain. She held in a gasp, fearing for a moment that the changeling had opted to end his life rather than face Terra as her enemy once more—as expected, her fear went unjustified when the boy morphed back into human form only a few feet above the ground.

He landed neatly atop a large boulder, sitting in a very catlike position atop the rock and trying a smile for the girls. "Are we goin' in?" he asked in a very lighthearted tone, looking from Raven to Starfire almost hopefully.

Raven winced; she thought it might literally rip her apart inside if she had to keep watching him act this way. Whether it was her empathic powers or her own personal feelings that made her hurt like this for him didn't matter—she only knew that she needed to stop it before it tore one or both of them apart. "Beast Boy—"

Her sentence was interrupted by a large explosion from the hillside not thirty feet away from the trio. All three of the Titans whirled around, instantly crouching into battle stance in preparation for whatever was being thrown at them.

It wasn't a chunk of rock, or even any sort of deadly contraption. Starfire's eyes went wide—it was headed straight toward her.

"Eep!"

She collapsed beneath him as she was hit by the flailing, black-clad form of Red X, who cursed quietly upon impact. Quickly pushing himself off of the dazed alien, he held out a hand before even thinking about what he was doing. "You okay?" he questioned, immediately freezing up at the surprised and curious gaze she was returning to him.

Now he wanted to kick his own ass. He hadn't felt more stupid since he'd woken up in a bizarre, geomancer-crafted cavern and realized he was at the mercy of a skinny blonde girl.

"Sorry," he lamely murmured, drawing his hand back and straightening his stance. Starfire could only blink at him in wonder while he narrowed his eyes toward the newly-blown hole in the side of the mountain. Once again, X found himself exceedingly thankful for the mask that covered his face—blushing this intensely should be banned from human existence. Or capability. If that was even possible.

"It is…not forgivable," she breathed, smiling slightly at the odd joke she managed to crack in the awkward situation she'd found herself in. X glanced back down at her, a small smile gracing his hidden lips as well. He offered her a hand a second time, and this time she took it, allowing the anti-hero to pull her to her feet before hastily releasing it and floating off to the other side of Raven.

He felt a little bit better, now, at least. She was blushing nearly as madly as he was. The mixed expression of surprise and guilt that her face wore seemingly went completely unnoticed by the other two; the glare on Raven's face suddenly commanded his attention, and he realized for the first time that perhaps he shouldn't be sticking around in a spot where he was surrounded by three of the five Teen Titans.

"Guess she's coming out," Beast Boy remarked, adding onto his question a moment ago and grinning weakly at his own joke. Starfire placed a comforting hand on his shoulder; he glanced at it, then sighed, moving his eyes back toward Red X and waiting for Raven to do whatever it was she was about to do to the criminal. He made it a point to avert his gaze from the hole X had been blasted out of—he wouldn't be ready to see her if her small form emerged from it. Not yet.

Instead of hitting the anti-hero with a barrage of incantations as he halfway expected her to, Raven only crossed her arms over her chest, her glare seeming to intensify slightly as she did so. "What's going on?" the empath questioned simply. As though she really expected to get a straight answer out of him without the customary snide remark that usually went with it.

His mouth spoke before he could even think about it; surprising even himself, X found himself giving her the straight answer she wanted, all jokes and retorts aside. "She tried to crush me. I got away. Got my belt." He paused to tap at said device. "Now she's trying to kill me."

"And I'll eventually _succeed_," the blonde's angry voice sounded from the hole in the hillside. All eyes traveled to her; she was poised atop a floating chunk of earth, her glowing hands directing three equally large chunks toward the group that now stood together just over twenty feet away. Again, Starfire's eyes went wide. Beast Boy found himself gaping helplessly at Terra's slim form, thrown into too many painful emotions to think to move.

Fortunately, he didn't have to. Raven held her hands up, creating a black shield between the Titans plus their extra and the three chunks of rock; Red X grabbed Starfire by the arm and hauled her away, earning another surprised "eep" from the alien princess. "_Move!_" Raven shouted at the changeling when the first boulder collided with the shield.

Beast Boy suddenly snapped back into reality. The shield wasn't going to hold up. The second rock smashed into it, shattering the top and effectively destroying the rest of the dark barrier the empath had created. Hopping off of the boulder he was still perched atop, Beast Boy lunged toward Raven's wide-eyed, defenseless form, tackling her out of the way while the third and final chunk of rock smashed into the boulder the changeling had been sitting on.

"She didn't get you guys here to save me," X called to Raven from the spot he'd run to, still absently holding onto Starfire's wrist while his attention was focused entirely elsewhere. The two of them stood on a small rise of earth on the edge of a cliff that led down to the river a few hundred feet below them; Starfire was anxiously peering downward, trying to focus her attention on something that wasn't the fact that X was holding onto her like Robin usually did. The thief was oblivious. "I was the bait. She wants to kill you all, too."

"I wouldn't speak so knowingly of a subject I knew so little on if I were you," Terra snapped, unseen by the thief while she jerked her hand in X's direction.

He wasn't paying enough attention; his eyes were on Raven and took time to move to Terra. Too much time.

He completely faltered when he was met with the image of a huge chunk of earth flying toward his face. Losing control of his limbs, X fell over stupidly, releasing Starfire and bracing himself for the impact with the ground. He knew he hadn't enough time to brace himself against the enormous rock, as well.

A blast of emerald light blinded him for a few seconds; automatically, he held up an arm to shield himself from the glare. The light dimmed quickly—X realized just as quickly that he wasn't unconscious or dead. Looking back upwards, he saw Starfire's form standing over him, her palm outstretched and emitting small traces of smoke from the heat they'd just expelled.

She's saved his life. "Thanks," he said dumbly. She warmly smiled back at him.

"Do not mention it."

The sound of a revving engine effectively broke his focus away from the girl; he turned his head to watch the arrival of the T-car, followed shortly by the R-cycle. Robin hadn't so much as parked the vehicle before he threw off his helmet and began screaming at the thief who was still sitting helplessly on the ground beside Starfire.

"Get away from her!" the boy wonder shouted angrily, pulling a fistful of explosives from his utility belt while he hopped off of his motorcycle and dashed toward the two. Starfire immediately blushed an embarrassing shade of gold; X attempted to push himself up and hold up his hands innocently at once, resulting in nothing but an awkward stumble while the enraged hero continued to advance on him.

"Robin!" Raven's irritated voice snapped, effectively drawing the attention of all three of the teenagers involved. All of their eyes moved to Raven, who was still lying on the ground next to Beast Boy. She'd managed to push herself up halfway, at least—her legs were still outstretched, but her arms supported her upper body. "Stop acting stupid! We've got bigger problems than X right now!"

Robin shot a glare at Red X, who continued to stare back in return, before begrudgingly replacing his devices to their proper compartment in his belt. Pushing his suspicions about X's intentions with Starfire out of his mind, Robin forced himself to quickly survey the situation, glancing at each of his teammates in an attempt to assess what had happened between when Starfire had contacted him and now.

The changeling appeared to be at least mostly mentally there; his eyes were full of concern and darting between Terra's floating piece of rock and Raven's seemingly undamaged form. The two of them were together on the ground near a conglomeration of crumbled pieces of earth—Robin could only assume that they'd been attacked by the geomancer above them not long before he'd arrived. Cyborg had just climbed out of the T-car and was looking relatively confused as to what was going on. Starfire was blushing a furious shade of gold, which didn't help X's case much; the boy wonder snuck another glare toward the anti-hero before resolving to set his cold stare permanently on Terra.

She was looking rather smug with herself, standing on one of her floating pieces of earth while smirking down at all of them. _Probably thinking something about how weak we all are, just like Slade would want her to,_ Robin mentally fumed, his muscles twitching with the need to pummel the crap out of _something_. His anger toward the black-clad thief hadn't quite faded—but somehow, taking it out on Terra simply didn't seem right. He decided that he would have to take it up with X personally once the battle they were currently engrossed in was over.

"Well, well."

Terra's voice interrupted Robin's planning for later, bringing him back to reality in a flash; the boy wonder narrowed his eyes a bit more up at her menacing figure, trying to picture a skull mask over her face instead of the image of the girl he'd once considered a friend.

"This _is_ an interesting sight, isn't it?"

"Why are you doing this, Terra?" Robin yelled at her, trying to challenge her. She seemed to take no notice.

The rock she stood on floated slowly downward; all six of them could only stare at it in confusion, wondering what in the world she could possibly be planning. Starfire noticed it before any of the others did—Terra's eyes were fixed solely on Beast Boy.

The changeling hadn't let this slip completely past him, either; he simply chose to pretend that he didn't see it. As she drew closer, however, the presence of her stare was overwhelming. He couldn't avert his eyes any longer. He had to look at her, as much as it hurt him to. _Just try to keep the tears out of your eyes until you get home,_ he told himself sternly, drawing in a breath while she floated ever closer.

"I guess I can understand. You thought I was dead. It's been three years, at least. I guess I should have expected you to move on by now."

"Shut up."

He whispered it more to himself than to her; for this reason, she took no note.

"Still…I can't lie to you, Beast Boy."

Said Titan stared on in shock while he watched the smirk on her face flicker away for a split second. It was quickly replaced, but the look in her eyes remained changed nevertheless. They shone with an odd reflection of the setting sun, much more red than normal.

She opened her mouth to speak again, and quickly closed it, forcing the smirk back onto her face. Beast Boy's eyes widened slightly.

She tried again. "I'm…"

She broke off, the corners of her mouth plunging downward involuntarily while a tear slipped from the corner of each of her eyes.

"…hurt."

"Terra," the changeling murmured, moving toward her before he could control himself. His arms wrapped tightly around her, just as they had a million times before in his dreams. This time, it wasn't a dream. This time she hugged him back. She was crying now, yes, but she was hugging him back.

"I—I missed you so much, Beast Boy," she stammered, her voice hitching uncontrollably while her body shook with the force of her sobs. "I know I—s-said that I didn't—didn't remember, but I—I—"

He shushed her softly, stroking the back of her head with his gloved hand and staring off into the distance behind her. "Don't worry about it, Terra. I missed you, too. We'll talk about it, but not right now…okay?"

Starfire smiled warmly at the sight she was witnessing, turning toward Robin to see his reaction to such a display. He, too, was wearing a small smile, and while she stared at him he glanced at her. Both of them blushed lightly, and both looked away, returning their eyes to the pair that stood at the center of everyone's attention.

Raven was still seated dismally on the ground a few feet from where the pair stood. The dejected feeling, she guessed, had probably left Beast Boy's heart by now.

That absolutely did not explain why the feeling she felt had only been enhanced tenfold.

Before Raven could think of anything clever to say that would break the two apart, Terra drew in a sharp gasp, interrupting the moment and all the affection it had brought with it. "You have to leave," she said urgently, drawing away from Beast Boy and staring with a panicked expression into his face. "You guys have gotta get out of here, something bad's gonna happen if you stay."

"What? And leave you here?" Beast Boy asked half-jokingly, but the hurt in his eyes at the idea was very real. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, Beast Boy. I can't explain right now, but you guys have to—have to—_argh_!"

The tiny girl finally released him completely, instantly pressing her hands to her head and recoiling a few steps backward while she grunted in pain. The changeling immediately began to panic. "_Raven_?" he cried, hoping that whatever was happening to the geomancer was something that could be easily repaired.

Looking to the empath, however, completely dashed what little hopes he had. "I don't know what's happening to her," Raven said, a tone of alarm plainly audible in her voice. "Something's controlling her, something's getting into her mind, but whatever it is has a block on me. I can't get to her."

Her eyes moved to Beast Boy, who was visibly tearing up at the words she was speaking. It could have killed her to say to him what she had to say next.

"There's nothing I can do, Beast Boy. I'm…sorry."

"NO! There _has_ to be _something_! You can't just let her—but—she's…"

"Get out of here!" the girl cried, panicked, waving an arm toward the group in an attempt to signify the urgency of the situation. Her hand glowed while she did it; Raven jumped to her feet and shrouded Beast Boy with her cloak, pulling him downward into the earth with her dark energy before a hoard of rampant boulders flung in their direction.

The ground began to tremble at her feet. Terra opened her eyes, a look of panic remaining on her face, but this time her eyes were glowing the same yellow that came from her hands. As though she was a doll being controlled by some puppeteer, she lifted her arms, holding them in front of her—as clear a shot toward Robin as anyone would ever manage to get on him.

"I'm…sorry…" she gasped quietly before her eyes slipped closed.

An enormous chunk of the mountain ripped away from the side just beyond her; Robin's eyes went wide in alarm. There was no way he could possibly survive being hit with that thing.

"_Move!_" he shouted to Cyborg, the only Titan close enough to be impacted by the giant slab of earth as well. The two of them took off to the right, running in the opposite direction of where Starfire and Red X still stood in the hopes that the rock would either hit the spot where they'd been or follow them away from the alien girl and the thief they'd come here to collect.

X watched almost laughingly while Robin fled, wishing he could think of some sort of clever comment that would cause the boy to stop and be pummeled by the slab of rock. He hopped down from the rise that they were still atop, walking a few strides toward the pair who ran from the huge chunk of earth that followed them.

It was while this thought passed through his mind that Red X noticed something. It wasn't going toward them. It wasn't even going toward the car and motorcycle they'd left in the path of the enormous rock slab. It was coming toward _him_.

No—not him. It was too high. Meaning…

The thief's eyes went wide. "Starfire!"

Robin instantly skidded to a halt, whirling about in horror and repeating the distorted voice that spoke before him. "Starfire!"

Red X held up his palms, aiming for the massive boulder while it hurled toward the alien girl. Starfire, too, charged her hands with starbolts and drew back to take a mighty swing at the object when it reached her. Robin abruptly ran back toward the two, pulling the same explosives he intended to use on X earlier out of his belt. Without even thinking, he shouted a command for the trio to follow, temporarily completely forgetting that X wasn't and never would really be on his side.

"_Now!_"

As he said it, all three fired at the enormous object. Robin's explosives crumbled a good chunk of the rock off of the far side of it; Starfire's starbolts broke another piece off of the half facing her. Red X managed to take off another piece from the side he was nearest.

It wasn't enough, and it was moving too fast. Starfire's eyes widened in horror, realizing that she couldn't possibly stop it at its current velocity. "Eep!"

"_Starfire!_" Robin shrieked, watching helplessly while what was left of the rock collided with her body. It didn't hurt physically, but it was enough to knock her unconscious. She stumbled backward and fell.

Down. _Way_ down. There was no hillside there, Robin suddenly realized. That was a cliff.

"_No!_"

He was moving before he knew it, running toward the edge of the cliff she'd just fallen from. He would have gone over with her. He didn't care. He needed to catch her, to save her, to make sure she was all right. If she died in consequence of falling so far down into water cold enough to kill a human being, how would he be able to face himself? He needed her—they _all_ needed her. She was always there when any of them needed a friend. How could he live with himself if he didn't do everything in his power to save her?

The hero would have let his momentum carry him over the edge. He didn't care. The only thing he thought of was saving her—the repercussions on a human body falling such a great distance barely passed through his mind

The only thing that stopped him from catapulting off of the cliff along with her was a quick grab by a gray, gloved hand. Robin fell backward, hitting the ground on his back while the hand continued to hold onto his cape. "Don't be an idiot," the familiar voice snapped at him in annoyance. Robin's head was still spinning; he pushed himself to a kneeling position, his eyes following the lifeless form of his closest friend as she splashed into the water below them. He couldn't have discerned the owner of the hand that had grabbed him if someone had offered him a million dollars. "You'll die from the fall alone."

"No," the hero mumbled, allowing the sorrow that was already building up inside him to begin to devour his soul. "I have to save her, she's hurt…I can't let her…"

"She isn't dead," X growled, his tone hinting at his inward frustration with the boy. "She's from another planet—she's strong. She'll be just fine."

"But—"

"Just shut up," the anti-hero commanded, turning from Robin to look to the rest of the team. "Beast Boy!"

As if on cue, Raven emerged from the stony side of the mountain, bringing the changeling up along with her. X pointed toward the edge of the cliff; the pair of Titans didn't need much more than a glance around to realize that one of their numbers was missing.

"I need you to go down there and get Starfire," the thief stated calmly, still pointing past Robin's defeated form.

Beast Boy looked nervously toward Terra, who had collapsed from either the pain caused by whoever had ripped through her mind or the exhaustion from hurling such a large object such a distance. "But…Terra…"

"Starfire _needs_ you," X said urgently, nodding his head animatedly toward Robin, trying to silently add, "_Robin needs you, too."_

"But…why can't…?"

"_I'll go_, Beast Boy," Raven interrupted him, stalking angrily away from the changeling's wide-eyed form. She shot X a glare while she walked past him and paused to lean a comforting hand on Robin's shoulder before turning back to shoot the changeling a scowl. "I'm sure Terra needs you more than Starfire does, anyway."

Beast Boy was speechless, only able to gape at Raven's cloaked figure while she dove off of the cliff as though she was diving into a swimming pool. It only took a few seconds for his face to grow hot with anger and embarrassment.

"I didn't—but, Terra just—_Raven!_"

He quickly found himself storming after the empath, and seconds later he'd morphed into a falcon, plummeting downward after the girl he was both so furious with and felt guilty toward. He wasn't sure what was running through his head anymore, much less why his stomach felt like it was twisting itself into a triple-knot, but he didn't have time to stop and wonder.

After all, Starfire needed him.

X watched the falcon fall from the cliff for a moment before turning his eyes toward Terra. Cyborg was already walking toward her, removing something from the paneling on his robotic armor that X could only assume was some sort of sensor.

The thief looked toward Robin, who still stared dejectedly off of the side of the cliff, watching the empath and changeling while they searched for Starfire's body. "She's gone," the boy wonder murmured, more to himself than to anyone else. X sighed quietly, briefly setting a gloved hand on his rival's shoulder.

"She'll be fine," he said again, tugging gently at the boy's arm to earn a broken stare. X nodded his head toward Terra; Robin followed the motion. "She needs help, too, you know. Those two will find your girl. You two help Terra."

Numbly, Robin nodded, though he still found himself unable to muster the energy required to stand. "What about you?"

The thief grinned behind his mask. "I'm getting out of here before you five decide to follow through on the girl's bargain."

The boy wonder didn't even think of protesting. He only looked toward Terra, noticing X taking his leave from the corner of his eye. _Another day,_ he mused to himself.

Involuntarily, he shuddered.

_That sounded too much like Slade._


	3. Guilt

**My Own Worst Enemy**  
_Chapter 3 – Guilt_

It was a long trek home on foot for the young thief. He hadn't thought to steal Robin's motorcycle at the moment; even if he had, he more than likely would have let the opportunity slip past him, anyway. The poor kid had lost more than enough already.

Red X hated Robin. That much was too true to dispute. Nevertheless, he couldn't let his hatred stop him from respecting the boy. Twenty minutes of inner monologue while he walked the huge distance from the mountains back toward the city had let him eventually come to terms with that. Guilt wasn't a very common feeling for the thief, but right now he was experiencing it in truckloads.

_I should have stayed._

He was sure that Starfire would be fine. He didn't know her too well, personally—they'd only met a few times, and each of those times he was typically more absorbed with throwing snide comments Robin's way than getting to know the lovely alien girl who usually seemed so reluctant to fight him. Still, he knew her by reputation; he knew she'd survived much worse than what had just happened to her.

So there was really no reason he should have stayed behind. Beast Boy and Raven probably plucked Starfire from the icy waters within minutes of his disappearance. The group of them was probably already back at the tower (X quickly cursed them for having their various means of transportation handy) and treating Terra in the medical bay. There was absolutely nothing to worry about.

Right? Right. Nothing to worry about.

So why was he continuing to feel as though he should have turned back a mile ago?

X sighed, finally starting to feel defeated, and stopped in his tracks, looking behind him through the trees at the base of the mountain he was just reaching the bottom of as though it would let him see the group again. "This is ridiculous," he grumbled to himself, now turning completely toward the spot he'd left them in and starting to walk back up the hillside toward the Titans. "This kind of idiocy is only gonna get me thrown in jail."

It would take him another good twenty minutes to get back to where he'd left them. By then, they would surely be gone, if they weren't already. The thief figured that he could at least get some peace of mind by seeing that they really hadn't had any problems. He wouldn't be wondering whether or not Starfire was alright for the next few days.

_I _am _too much like Robin,_ he realized with a grimace. _Trying to save people I don't even like. This better be the only time I feel this guilty about stuff like this._

A whizzing sound flew past him somewhere to his left, effectively cutting his inner monologue short. He paused, tensing his stance and glancing around him, listening as the trees and bushes he still strode through rustled in the distance with whatever had just blown past. _Weird_, he thought, glancing to his other side to ensure that nothing had circled him and come back to attack. Surely enough, nothing was there; the thief let himself relax and turned to look behind him, wondering what in the hell could have moved that fast without smacking into anything along the way.

Maybe he was just losing his mind. After all, it seemed to have become a recent trend.

X smirked to himself while he turned to continue walking back to where he'd left the Titans. _Now there's something Robin wouldn't joke about._

¸ o ´ o ¸ o ´

"We've got to get her back to the tower, Robin."

The boy wonder didn't respond to his robotic teammate; he merely continued pacing back and forth in front of the fallen blonde, his mind clearly entirely elsewhere.

Cyborg pressed his lips together and wondered what exactly he was supposed to say to snap Robin out of his trance. Beast Boy and Raven still hadn't returned with Starfire—at this point, it was fairly clear that something had happened, and Cyborg knew that the odds of Robin willingly leaving this spot were slim to none while the Tamaranian girl was still missing.

Still, he tried again. "Terra's lost consciousness. She needs medical attention. We have to get her back to the tower."

Robin stopped his pacing, glancing at Cyborg with a pained expression on his face. The half-robot cleared his throat pointedly.

"_Now_."

Silence fell over the two for a few seconds. Robin's masked eyes moved first to Terra, and then to the edge of the cliff.

"Just a few more minutes."

Cyborg rolled his eyes, not wanting to feel exasperated with the young hero but unable to help himself. "She's fine. Terra isn't. I don't know what that thing, whatever it was, did to her head. We need to get her back to the tower so I can run a neural—"

"I _said_ a few more minutes."

"She might not _have_ a few more minutes," Cyborg spat in return. "What if she's in a coma? What if she's brain damaged? What if the damage only gets worse while we're standing here _waiting_?"

Robin whirled around, glaring with all his might at the half-human and opening his mouth to retort. But he didn't know what to say; how could he come up with a valid reason that they shouldn't take Terra to safety as quickly as possible? His mouth hung open for a moment before he thought to close it, straightening his stance and folding his arms while Cyborg looked on with narrow eyes.

"You go on and take her. I can't leave yet."

"Robin…"

"I can't." His voice was firm, and his eyes narrowed to match the defiance in his tone. Cyborg only sighed. "I'm sorry. I can get Raven or Beast Boy up here if you need someone to go with you. I can't leave."

Nodding, Cyborg stooped down to scoop up the tiny blonde in his arms, taking a few steps toward the T-car before pausing to look back at the boy wonder. "I understand that it hurts, man. Just…don't go crazy on me. She'll turn up."

Robin stared toward the cliff, letting the wind blow his cape around his body and ignoring the impulsive urge to shiver. "I know," he said quietly. Even though he didn't.

He said it with the hope that the confidence would come to him with the words. It didn't work.

Oblivious, Cyborg let out another sigh while he turned away with the cataleptic geomancer in his arms. "Why don't you call Rae and see if she'll send BB up, then? I'm sure he'd want to be with Terra right now."

"Yeah." Absently, the boy wonder pulled out his communicator, flipping it open and pressing a button until he saw Raven's twisted frown come across the screen. Already he didn't like that frown a bit. "What is it?"

"We can't find her."

He'd somehow already known that the empath was going to say that. "Did you check further down the river?"

"We checked everywhere, Robin. Beast Boy is in the water right now searching again."

"Well, check the forest, too. Maybe she got out and went—"

"Robin."

Cyborg's voice cut him off; the hero turned to see his friend giving him a discouraging stare. Robin sighed in defeat. "Maybe we should all head back. See if we can pick her up on the sensors or something."

"Exactly what I was thinking," Raven responded, looking to the icy water she hovered above. "As soon as Beast Boy comes up, we'll come to meet you. I'm sure Beast Boy wouldn't want Terra going without him."

Robin quirked an eyebrow, noting the twitch in Raven's features while she spoke the geomancer's name. Opting to ignore it for the moment, he simply nodded in response. "That's what Cyborg suggested. We'll get her situated in the back while you guys finish up. At the tower, we'll hopefully be able to get a lock on Star's signal."

"Right. See you in a few." Raven paused, stopping her hand in motion while she reached to flip her communicator shut. "We'll find her, Robin," she promised, trying a small smile before finishing the act she'd started.

Robin was glad she hadn't waited for a response from him. Flipping his own device closed and returning it to his belt, the boy wonder turned and walked toward Cyborg, who had the back door of the T-car wide open and was currently wondering how exactly he planned to situate the unconscious girl in the backseat. Leaving, in a way, felt to him as though he was somehow betraying Starfire…but he knew he couldn't let himself think of it like that.

Besides, he wasn't planning on sleeping before she was found.

¸ o ´ o ¸ o ´

As he'd expected, X arrived to find an empty mountainside, the debris from the blast Terra had blown him out of the cavern with still strewn across the ground. Now that he'd confirmed his suspicion, X was satisfied to realize that he'd just effectively wasted an hour of his life to start toward the city and then come back to find nothing. _Just goes to show what guilt does for you,_ he inwardly mused, glancing around to make sure he was alone before shrugging and turning back toward the path that led home.

He'd only gotten a few steps forward before he stopped. Something wasn't right. He didn't know why, but he had the strongest feeling that something was watching him. Turning his head slightly, he peered at the ground beside him, his mind going back to the last time he'd hesitated to turn around when he sensed someone behind him.

He shuddered discreetly. Dealing with Terra hadn't exactly been fun. If he turned around to find a large, iron object swinging toward his head, he was going to have to seriously hurt somebody.

When he turned, his eyes only met darkness. X blinked in confusion; he was rarely wrong when he felt a presence around him.

But maybe he was just being paranoid.

The thief tried to shrug the feeling off, turning once more and beginning to walk toward the city. _Maybe whatever happened to the blonde girl was contagious._ It had seemed like a bad joke earlier, but now the idea started to feel like a very real possibility. Especially once he heard someone laughing softly from above him.

X turned quickly this time, looking up and striking a defensive stance. His eyes widened when they met with a very familiar-looking, darkened figure in the sky, several yards away from where he stood. He merely gaped at it for a moment with a stupid expression on his hidden face before he thought to try and speak. "Starfire?"

The figure didn't respond. Instead, it plummeted downward, snapping to a horizontal flight when it reached the ground. It was approaching fast; X backed up a step, holding his arms in front of him to ward off any oncoming starbolts, and—

_THWACK._

She punched him hard across the face before he could so much as make sure it was her. Dazed, he fell to the ground, watching her dark figure stop above him and barely making out a smirk on her lovely face. It _was_ Starfire, he was almost sure of it—her hair looked darker, but it was probably only the night's sky he was seeing it against. He couldn't quite see her eyes, and they were usually so bright…but again, he blamed the blackness that surrounded him. "What are you doing?" he questioned, beginning to push himself up.

She stopped him by pressing one of her boots against his chest, pushing him into the ground until the air was forced out of his body. "It isn't your lucky day, after all," she smirked. X's eyes went wide; her foot came down hard onto his head before he could get a word out.

For the second time within twenty-four hours, everything around him suddenly went dark.

¸ o ´ o ¸ o ´

He couldn't find her. It had been more than two hours since he'd seated himself in front of the main computer in the operations room, and still he had nothing to show for it.

Robin had tried searching for her signal on every frequency the communicators were capable of using, thinking that perhaps the fall had knocked the settings awry. More than half of an hour passed on that effort with no result. He attempted a sonic scan next without thinking that the sound of rushing water was just as detectable by the device as a human heartbeat. The machine, being too stupid to know the difference between the two and lacking the capability to block out the flow of the river from its sensors, proved entirely useless. Running a heat scan on the area seemed at first a much better idea, but the boy wonder hadn't taken into consideration the huge distance between the city and the mountainside they'd found Terra on—he lacked the means to run a more concentrated sweep than one that wouldn't even tell him the difference between the signature of a fish or an elk.

He was beginning to lose hope. He was growing very tired. Staring at a computer screen could only leave his eyes blissfully unaffected for so long. At first, he was determined to find her; now, he only wanted to bang his head repeatedly against the keyboard that sat between him and the screen.

She was probably fine, he tried to tell himself. She'd probably only been carried further down the river before either washing ashore or awakening on her own. She would probably be back at the tower any minute now.

He genuinely wanted to make himself believe it, but Robin had never been very good at holding onto hope, especially when the sliver offered to him was so unbearably small.

The sound of the doors at the head of the room sliding open piqued his attention; the boy wonder glanced over his shoulder, daring to hope that he'd see her familiar red-headed form floating in through the door with the same bright smile she always greeted him with. He was disappointed to find that it wasn't Starfire coming to join him beside the console. It was Beast Boy, trying a weak smile and offering a small wave toward the leader of the Titans.

Robin attempted to smile in return, but the despondency that weighed itself upon him was too great to let him manage it. "Hi, Beast Boy," he greeted instead, moving his burning eyes back to the computer display before the changeling could get close enough to notice the worn-out look on the boy wonder's face.

The changeling let the smile slip away from his face once the other Titan's eyes were off of it. Letting out a quiet sigh, he stopped just behind the chair Robin occupied, folding his hands behind his back while he stared along with him at the various empty locations that were arranged on the screen. "I'm guessing it's still not going too well?" he asked, wishing as soon as the words escaped his mouth that he hadn't phrased it quite so bluntly.

Robin only wished that he'd left the "still" out of his inquiry. "No."

A moment of silence passed them by; both Titans simply stared wordlessly at the screen, barely even taking in the images shown to them by the various security cameras set about the city. It was late—not a single soul was walking the streets at this time of night. Surprisingly quiet, actually, for a city as lively as Jump.

Still, it was good that it was quiet. If a crime were to occur anytime soon, the team just might find themselves too disheartened to bother to stop it. "Terra isn't doing any better, either," Beast Boy said quietly, shooting a meek glance toward Robin in the hopes that, in some small way, his misfortune would somehow ease the other boy's pain.

Robin simply continued to stare at the monitor for a few seconds, letting the changeling's words unfold in his mind. He hadn't even thought about it before—not _ever_—but Beast Boy probably knew exactly what he was going through. He had gone through it more than once himself, after all. The boy wonder tore his eyes away from the monitor, frowning deeply and offering Beast Boy a remorseful stare. "I'm sorry," he said in a more sincere tone than the changeling could ever remember hearing him use.

"Don't worry about it," the changeling said casually, shrugging his shoulders so nonchalantly that Robin felt a stab of pain for Beast Boy in addition to the hurt he was already enduring. "She's gonna be fine. I just…don't know when, that's all."

He finished his sentence with a lighthearted laugh, rubbing the side of his head awkwardly while Robin only looked on with a troubled expression. He hadn't even considered what Beast Boy must have gone through when he lost Terra for the first time. To lose her a second time…it must have ripped the boy apart inside. It was a wonder that the changeling managed to be so happy all of the time for all the "I should have"s and "what if"s that must have gone through his mind at various points over the years.

Even now, while the geomancer was lying unconscious in the medical bay with only Raven and Cyborg to watch over her, Beast Boy was still smiling…still laughing at jokes that only he understood. Robin almost wanted to ask him how he managed to stay so upbeat even through everything he'd gone through over Terra, but truthfully, he didn't want to know. Nor did he want to have to find out on his own.

"This…" He paused, waving a hand toward the computer screen in front of him to indicate to Beast Boy what he meant. "…it isn't easy."

Robin's eyes remained on the monitor; a trace of the smile stayed on Beast Boy's face. "I know," he quietly acknowledged. He, too, watched the inactivity on the screen, hoping that he was at least serving as some sort of moral support for the boy wonder.

"What if…we can't find her, you know?" he said in a voice so soft it may have been mistaken for a whisper. The smile finally fell away from Beast Boy's face, melting into a deep, sympathetic frown. Robin, whose eyes were elsewhere, didn't take notice. "I can't even imagine…I mean, what if I wake up tomorrow morning and this wasn't just some kind of nightmare? I don't even…I mean, I can't even think of what it might be like…"

The changeling placed a comforting hand on Robin's shoulder; the boy wonder glanced at it, just as Beast Boy had when Starfire had done the same for him earlier that evening. "I know."

Robin felt tremendous amounts of guilt. He never even offered a hand to Beast Boy when Terra turned to stone. He never even thought about it—never even considered how much pain his teammate was probably going through. But Beast Boy was so strong on the outside; he handled his heartbreak with incredible grace, masking it nicely with smiles and jokes that earned a roll of the eyes from everyone. Maybe that was intentional, too, Robin mused. Maybe Beast Boy never really wanted to be funny. If someone got to like him because of it, he might grow attached to them again. What if, like Terra, he only ended up losing them?

"When Terra fought us on the street that day…and in the volcano…"

The other Titan's voice efficiently drew Robin out of his thoughts; he looked from his shoulder, which had been abandoned by Beast Boy's gloved hand, to the twisted expression changeling's face, waiting for him to continue.

"…you remember how Slade was controlling her, right?"

Robin slowly nodded. He hadn't heard it himself, but Beast Boy had told them all the story once the fight was over. "The suit she wore. It was a neural interface that connected him directly to her nervous system."

Beast Boy nodded his confirmation. "And do you remember him ever getting into her head during that fight?"

Robin frowned a puzzled frown. "No. I don't."

"Neither do I." Beast Boy smiled to himself, feeling as though he'd finally figured something out without Robin beating him to the punch. This was probably largely due to Starfire's absence, but still… The changeling shook his head clear so that he could finish his statement without letting the sadness of his friend's disappearance get him down. "So I've got two theories on this. And before you ask or tell me not to be ridiculous, no—neither of them involves robots _or_ a trained army of any type of reptile."

The boy wonder couldn't help laughing at this. "Okay. I'll trust your judgment, but just this once."

"The way I see it, either Slade's suddenly developed some awesome mind-control powers, or he wasn't even the one controlling her."

The young hero was rendered silent for a few seconds. "But…her clothes…"

"It wasn't the same suit she wore the first time. And the orange—didn't you notice it was a little darker than Slade's normal color?"

Truthfully, he hadn't; he'd been too wrapped up in the anger of seeing Starfire blushing madly and standing so close to Red X to notice much else. Now that he thought about it, though…it _wasn't_ the same suit as the first time. It looked more like the one he'd worn as Slade's apprentice—half orange, half black. When Terra was the madman's apprentice, the suit she wore was silver, save for one black-and-orange detail fixed upon her chest. "And it was missing the 'S' he made us both wear," he realized aloud, blinking at Beast Boy as the realization donned upon him. "Do you think…?"

"Yeah, but who, you know? I mean, it doesn't make sense. Why would someone try to trick us into thinking they were Slade?"

Robin's brain couldn't even begin to process the question; shook his head lightly and rubbed at his face in exhaustion, finally resolving to click the monitor in front of him off for the night. "I don't know, but I can't think anymore today. I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow, we're going to find Starfire."

Beast Boy nodded, slightly disappointed, but understanding nonetheless. "Don't stress out, Robin. She'll be okay."

Robin pushed himself out of his chair, smiling weakly and patting Beast Boy on the shoulder before starting toward the door. "I hope so."

"I _know_ so," Beast Boy piped up confidently, his eyes following Robin the rest of the way out the door. Once it swished shut, the changeling sighed, his gaze moving almost automatically back to the now-blank screen Robin had been working at. Shrugging, he mused aloud, "What the heck, right?" and hopped into the seat Robin had left behind.

Maybe the boy wonder was too drained to work anymore on finding their friend and resident alien, but Beast Boy was certainly still too shaken up by the events of the day to even force himself to sleep. He might as well spend his time tonight doing something productive—it might even get his mind off of Terra for a few hours.

_No, it won't._

He knew the voice of reason in his head was right. It wouldn't, but at least he knew Terra was safe for the moment. If there was one thing Beast Boy knew, it was that losing someone so treasured could crush a person, and he didn't want Robin to have to feel the same way he had for the past few years. The sooner they located Starfire, the better…for everyone, but especially for Robin.

¸ o ´ o ¸ o ´

In the medical bay, the two remaining Titans sat together at a small table, both of their watchful sets of eyes cast upon the young geomancer lying unconscious on a bed across the room from them. The decision to bring her here, they both knew, was both slightly foolish and highly dangerous. Who was to say she wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night and proceed to bring the whole place to the ground once she realized where they were keeping her?

While there was no way to know for whether or not it should be a concern of his, Cyborg resolved for the moment to consider the possibility highly unlikely. His gaze passed over the various screens showing different sets of vital signs relayed by the monitoring devices she was currently rigged to. "Scanners show everything's normal," the half-robot sighed aloud, finally moving his eyes to the empath across the table from him.

Raven kept her stare on Terra's unconscious form, taking a long sip from a mug presumably filled with herbal tea before breaking her eyes away to meet Cyborg's. "I guess we've just gotta let her sleep it off," she observed, casting her eyes away from her teammate in an effort to appear nonchalant.

Cyborg was no empath, but he wasn't exactly dense, either. He'd had an idea that something was wrong with Raven since she'd berated Beast Boy for his hesitation to rescue Starfire. "Mind telling me what's wrong?" he pressed, leaning an elbow against the table and balling his hand into a fist to support his chin. Raven didn't so much as glance at him; Cyborg tried again. "I know you and Terra weren't exactly the best of friends, but I have a feeling that's not what's bothering you."

Raven briefly closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly to clear her cluttered mind. She could keep it to herself, but why bother? It was probably better that she opened up to _somebody_…since the girl that usually forced her to was currently absent. "I didn't even sense it, Cyborg. I couldn't even feel what was controlling her. She felt to me just like Terra gone bad—the same Terra we fought against when she first worked with Slade."

The half-robot guessed by the sour expression still displayed on Raven's face that that hadn't been the only thing bothering her. "You said yourself that whatever it was had a block on you," he said reasonably. "I don't know what it must have been, but if you can't sense it then you just _can't_. You shouldn't beat yourself up over it."

"I know."

The pair sat in silence for a moment, Raven's eyes remaining on Terra and Cyborg's on Raven. The empath sipped again at her tea before letting out a quiet sigh.

"It's just that…when she came down to taunt Beast Boy…_he_ knew."

Cyborg didn't know exactly what to say; he kept his gaze on her troubled features, trying to piece together something comforting to offer to her. Raven was never the easiest person in the world to offer a friendly hand to in the first place, though, and he was almost sure that he'd never had to console her through doubts about her own powers before.

"It was like he thought that hugging her would solve all their problems. And it _did_." Her eyes finally moved to meet Cyborg's, an apprehensive frown already overpowering her lips. "It made me physically sick just watching them, Cyborg. I don't know what it was—maybe because I _didn't_ know what was controlling her, and he so willingly let down his defenses…or maybe something else entirely. I don't know."

Cyborg's eyebrow quickly lifted in curiosity. This was a prime opportunity to tease her that he didn't think he could pass up, even with the given circumstances. "You don't think—I mean, you and BB aren't…are you?"

Raven only blinked at him in surprise, registering what he was implying before a blush quickly began to appear on her face; quite a rare occurrence for the empath in front of him. "No," she said quickly, shaking her head before the question could pose itself again in her own mind. "No, that wasn't it. I was just…angry."

"But…angry because of BB and Terra, right?"

The empath narrowed her eyes at Cyborg's wiggling eyebrows. "I'm trying to open up here, and you're not making it easy."

He only smiled goofily in response. "Sorry."

Her glare slowly relaxed, and her eyes moved toward the mug still loosely clutched in her hand. "I was angry because it seemed like he expected everything to be okay again. Just by holding onto her. He was being stupid, and I got _him_ out of the way when Slade started to tap into her powers…I wasn't there when Starfire needed me."

"Rae…" Cyborg frowned at the remorseful expression that had spread over Raven's face. "That isn't your fault. You did the only thing you could do. If you and BB hadn't gotten out of the way, you'd have both been knocked out anyway. Nothing would have changed what happened to Starfire."

The emotions surging through her turned her hand black while it held onto the mug; a spurt of tea quickly splashed up from it, causing Raven to hastily release the object. Wide-eyed, she simply stared at her palm for a moment before drawing her hood back up over her face. "I could have done something," she quietly disagreed. "I could have stopped it."

"No, Rae. Don't get yourself down about that." The half-human tried an encouraging smile, earning at least a sideways glance from the guilt-ridden empath across from him—which, he surmised, was better than nothing. "Besides, Star's gonna be just fine. She'll be turning up anytime now. I'm sure of it."

_I wouldn't be so sure,_ Raven wanted to tell him. _I can't sense her anywhere. I couldn't sense her in the river. Not in the forest. Her emotions are too freely expressed to let her easily hide from me._

Instead, she gave a small smile in return, letting her hand return to her mug while keeping the importance of holding her feelings in check in the back of her mind. "I hope you're right."


	4. X

A/N: I had a lot of trouble with this chapter. This is why it wasn't posted as instantaneously as the others. I wanted it to be perfect, and I wasn't going to settle. So I didn't; I made you all wait instead. XD Hopefully, though, it was worth it.

* * *

**My Own Worst Enemy**  
Chapter 4 – _X_

The crisp, autumn air blew a chill through the streets of Jump City, causing most pedestrians to huddle further into their coats and scarves as they walked through their daily morning routines. Some were headed toward the coffee shop, and others made their way toward the jobs they would spend the next eight hours suffering through. Still others were wandering rather aimlessly through the city due to a true lack of anything better to do.

One shivering teenage boy was a prime example. Undoubtedly, he should have been in school by this hour—it was after nine o'clock, and most inner city schools began classes at eight. Still, for whatever reason, the boy was roaming around and stopping to look at anything that caught his interest. At the moment, he was standing in front of a newspaper stand, looking over a rack full of magazines for something that might prove to be an interesting read. He wore a large, black coat, his hands stuffed into his pockets to keep an unnecessary chill from creeping onto them.

Most of the magazines and newspapers looked fairly boring, featuring articles such as "Crime Rates Falling" and "10 Ways to Get Your Guy," both of which the boy thoroughly didn't believe or even need. He frowned while his eyes ran across one of the headlines. It was a tabloid—typically, he would have written it off as something absurd that shouldn't be trusted. But the black-and-white photo of a very familiar savior of the city was plastered across the cover, accompanied by only one word besides the tabloid's title.

"_Kidnapped!"_

Scanning her smiling image a second time, the boy let out a quiet snort at the simple caption that accompanied her. It was a picture of Starfire, the alien member of the Teen Titans; her dazzling eyes couldn't be mistaken, even through a grayscale rendition. He reached for the magazine without even thinking, grabbing at the corner of the flimsy paper before his hand was smacked firmly away by a rolled-up newspaper.

Surprised, the boy looked up, meeting the incredulous glare of the newsstand operator. "You got any money, kid?" the man asked gruffly, his narrow eyes helping him succeed in getting his implication across to the teenager before him. "_This isn't a library. Now scram."_

The boy glared briefly at the man in return, but held his hands up innocently and backed away nonetheless. "Sorry," he apologized, taking a few steps back before turning and dropping his arms to his sides while he walked casually away. The owner shook his head disdainfully, feeling sorry not for the first time for the future of the country when it was left in the hands of these idiotic children.

Once his back was turned, the boy rolled his eyes. He glanced at his watch while he rounded the nearest corner, pausing against the wall of the building that separated him from the newsstand owner's sight. _Five seconds_, the boy thought reasonably, folding his arms and leaning patiently against the brick wall. _Four…three…two…_

Peeking around the corner, he watched the glass doors of a jewelry shop right across from the newspaper stand burst open; a man dressed in black carrying a small, brown knapsack came rushing out, a black pistol clutched in his right hand. The boy smirked to himself, counting the last number in his mind before launching himself back out onto the main road, running toward the newsstand at top speed.

The owner was oblivious, his eyes moving lazily over an article in the newspaper he'd just used to smack the teenager's hand. He recoiled in shock when the same hand banged frantically on the counter in front of him. "Hey, I thought I told you to…" The man trailed off, noting the panic now displayed in the boy's eyes. "Wh-what—"

"The jewelry store's being robbed! Didn't you _see_ it?" the boy cried, pointing wildly in the direction the black-clad man was running. The newsstand operator followed the boy's arm, his eyes widening when he saw the man's dark form running at top speed down the street. The teenager's voice effectively pulled him back out of his state of shock. "Hurry up and call the cops!"

"I—uh—yeah," the man stammered, fumbling stupidly in his pocket for his cell phone. Once he retrieved it, the man pushed himself off of his stool, dialing 911 while he made his way out of the stand to get a clearer view of the criminal he was about to report. "Yeah, this is Joe, the newspaper guy. The jewelry store across the street just got robbed!" Joe paused, straining his eyes to see the approximate height and weight of the thief who continued to race away. "Yeah, he's about six feet tall, medium build…"

The boy still stood at the stand, grinning to himself at what he'd just accomplished. Turning toward the tabloid he'd intended to read, he plucked it from the shelf, stuffing it into the pocket in the inside of his coat. Just to spite the man, the boy picked up a few more random magazines, stashing them in the same location before beginning to nonchalantly walk away from the scene while Joe still stuttered to the police over his cell phone.

He was good at what he did and he knew it. The fact that the man robbing the jewelry store had asked him for advice only a few days before only worked to boost his already inflated ego. Sure, he knew that the man wouldn't get away with it, but that was hardly the point. The point was that he now had the article about Starfire in his coat pocket. Once he got a reasonable distance from the newsstand, he'd be able to see exactly what the tabloid's take on her disappearance had been. _Who knows—maybe someone picked up on something I didn't._

Highly unlikely, yes. The article more than probably contained some foolish explanation such as "alien abducted by aliens!" or something equally ridiculous to lure in gullible readers. Still, there was a slim chance that it would help him figure out what exactly had happened to him the night before…and plus, it was free. So why not take it?

_Words to live by,_ he silently mused, glancing over his shoulder to ensure that the man hadn't yet noticed the disappearance of a few of his items. Surely enough, the newsstand operator was still in the phone, now pointing in random directions while presumably trying to figure out whether to tell the cops that the thief was headed east or west. The boy couldn't help laughing to himself at the sight. _He might get away with it, after all._

Before he even managed to turn his head to face forward again, he collided with a person moving much faster than himself. He stumbled back more in surprise than anything else, his defenses automatically rising in preparation for an attack. "What the—"

He stopped himself before he could finish the infuriated question, blinking in confusion while the person who ran into him continued to run away. _Weird_, he thought, shrugging it off and starting back in the direction he'd intended. Another person ran past him, a panicked expression on her face. He stopped in his tracks; two more people ran by on the opposite side of the street, one of them screaming wildly and flailing her arms as though she'd gone completely insane.

The boy frowned deeply; no one had informed him of any planned acts of terrorism. The band of small-time criminals in the city looked up to him—usually they tried to include him in such events, or at least get his input for planning one, as random acts of violence were never really his style. So what was going on that was causing all these people to run away in terror?

He knew there was only one way to find out: go and see for himself.

As he went on, more and more people rushed past him, seemingly trying to escape from something as though their lives depended on it. Sounds of distant explosions eventually began to reach his ears; the boy frowned curiously, anxiously quickening his pace a bit. Whatever was going on had to have been pretty devastating—explosives usually meant that some depraved lunatic was the cause, and he generally tried to keep himself disassociated with psychopaths.

When he reached the next intersection, the illumination of flames coming off of one of the local shops was enough to tell him that something big was going on. People were screaming all around him, running past in a state of panic, constantly bumping into him as though they genuinely didn't notice his presence. He was hardly bothered by it anymore—he only tried to get closer, to find what the origin of all this commotion was. There had to be some nutty, colorfully-dressed villain at the center, shouting illogical threats at the innocent people around him. Whoever was doing this, the boy thought with narrow eyes, just might have to get a piece of his mind. Nobody with any common sense whatsoever had the audacity to go messing with his city without so much as a proper introduction.

An explosion went off somewhere to the right of where the flames were coming from; a hoard of people screamed at the top of their lungs, sending another panicked mob rushing past him. He took absolutely no notice, now. He'd been properly positioned to see that explosion as it went off, and now he realized that it wasn't an explosion at all.

The smoke that surrounded the now-flaming building was a bright shade of green. Now, he knew of only one explanation would that would suffice.

_Starfire._

He had to get out of here…had to change clothes, and quick. He knew he had to let a certain group of superheroes know about his latest find, but he couldn't do that until he was unrecognizable as a boy, seen instead as the notorious thief they knew him as: Red X.

oOoOoOoOoOoOo

Robin was up early—far earlier than any of the others, as usual. A conglomeration of potato chip crumbs and bits of chocolate chip cookies scattered all over the computer desk hinted to him that Beast Boy had spent a great deal of time continuing his search for Starfire even after the boy wonder had gone to bed. He assumed from the fact that the changeling hadn't rushed in to wake him during any part of the night that his search had been just as fruitless as Robin's had.

A fresh day had filled the young hero with a fresh sense of determination. He started his morning off by setting any and all security cameras he could remember the access codes to without Cyborg's assistance to show a satellite view of the mountains instead of the usual images of downtown Jump he was given. A quick scan of the river's shores showed no recent evidence of a person climbing out of the icy water; the best he could see was a variety of animal footprints that suggested he would have been able to see a boot's imprint in the dirt. Viewing the mountain they'd found Terra and X on directly only showed the same rocky mess he'd seen when they left it the night before.

But there was no way she was still in the water. Beast Boy had searched it himself. As Robin could recall Starfire saying about him once before, "People do not just vanish." _She has to be someplace, so go there and look,_ he said to himself, his lips curving into a thoughtful frown while her words repeated in his mind. _But I _am _looking—and I'm not seeing anything._

His eyes passed over the mountainside once again, filling him with a sense of genuine confusion. There was no sign of any activity past what he'd witnessed _anywhere_. The only thing he could think might be even somewhat suspicious was a human-shaped imprint in the ground…but that may have been there the night before. He hadn't seen much of what had gone on between Red X and Terra—it could have been the thief's body that was pressed there. Besides, it clearly wasn't thin enough to be Starfire-shaped, so it was of no relevance to him anyway.

A red light suddenly flashed to life somewhere above him; in annoyance, Robin looked up, glaring at the alarm while it went off. His eyes traveled to the screen, waiting impatiently while the image of one of Jump City's streets came over it. A man dressed in black was racing down a street, a brown bag filled with some sort of treasure in one hand and a gun in the other. Three police cars were zooming toward the man, who seemed to be too frantic to think to turn back and fire at the tires of the cruisers.

For the first time in his life, Robin hit the red button to the side of the monitor, promptly deadening the alarm. He felt only a twinge of guilt, but his priorities were too clear to him to change his mind. _The police can handle it,_ he told himself sternly, bringing the pictures of the mountainside back onto the screen. Frowning while his train of thought got back on track, the boy wonder instantly forgot that the alarm had even sounded.

_Where are you, Starfire?_

A few seconds later, the alarm began to whirl to life again; irritated, the hero slammed the silencer a second time, now beginning to grow annoyed. He didn't have time to fight crime right now—he had to find Starfire. He would go insane without her here.

Judging by his actions just now, he realized, he was already starting to.

…_I shouldn't have done that._

What was he thinking? The city was much more important than a search for a girl who could certainly hold her own against the forces of evil. Even if it was just a burglar, the man had a gun…what if innocent people were hurt because of his refusal to abandon his frantic search for a Tamaranian ten times stronger than any other human being on the planet? Beginning to berate himself for his actions, Robin finally pushed himself away from the desk, turning to run back toward the others' rooms to alert them to the crime. He was already not looking forward to explaining to them why the alarms in their rooms hadn't gone off on their own.

Before he could get to the door, the computer beeped at him again. Robin stopped in his tracks and turned over his shoulder, noting the green flashing light of a transmission trying to come through in the corner of the screen. _Probably the police chief,_ he realized with a grimace, moving back over to the computer to bring up the man's image. The boy wonder didn't even want to deal with the chief at the moment, but he knew didn't have much of a choice—he'd probably have to be doing some explaining as to why the alarm was deactivated twice within a five-minute time period. Robin gave himself a few seconds to think of a decent excuse before clicking the transmission to the front of the screen.

His eyes instantly widened at the face he was met with, then quickly narrowed. The person on the other end laughed in amusement upon observing Robin's reaction. "What's the matter, kid? You don't look happy to see me."

"I'll only be happy to see you when I'm seeing you behind bars," Robin shot back, folding his arms over his chest and glaring at the skull-shaped mask staring back at him. "I don't have time for games, X. I'm kind of in the middle of something."

"Looking for your girlfriend, I'll bet," X surmised, smirking to himself at the scowl that instantly formed over Robin's features. Exasperated, the boy wonder moved to press a button on the keyboard; the thief cleared his throat hastily, earning enough of a hesitation from the hero to express the reason for his transmission. "If that's the case, then you won't want to be hanging up on me just yet."

Robin froze, his eyes darting toward X and growing even more narrow than they already were. "Where is she?" he growled, leaning close against the desk to glare into the screen. "If you so much as lay a finger on her, I swear to you—"

"Relax, sunshine. I wouldn't even think about getting in her way right now."

An expectant pause ensued; Robin's gaze shifted awkwardly from furious to perplexed. "What are you talking about?"

Normally, X would have loved to capitalize on the opportunity to hold the knowledge over the hero's head. He found few things in life more amusing than watching the hero's face burn with frustration while the thief taunted him with whatever he could manage at the moment. However, this situation was different. X had been there to watch the girl disappear before his eyes. He'd seen how much the thought of losing her killed the spirit of his adversary. Therefore, he knew that he could only take his tormenting so far before it became inhumane. "Look at the city, Robin. Do you see the giant pillar of smoke rising from the center?"

The boy wonder moved his eyes toward the window. They widened considerably upon meeting the very image the thief had described. "Is that…because of Starfire?"

X nodded his masked head in confirmation. "Your girl is downtown, taking out everything in the shopping district in the name of the Pumpkin King."

_In the name of the…what the hell is he talking about?_ "I said I don't have time for games," Robin repeated tersely, holding his hand just above the button he would need to use to cut the transmission short. "Are you saying she's working with—"

A green burst of light suddenly covered the screen, and it quickly cut to black. The end of his question never got through to Red X. Robin's eyes narrowed at the blank monitor for a moment before he promptly shoved himself away from the desk, hurrying toward the other Titans' rooms to wake them. _Guess I'll have to take that as a yes._

oOoOoOoOoOoOo

The communicator he'd been holding was effectively blasted away. What was left of the screen was in pieces on the ground; the remainder of the case was partially melted and still smoking in his hand. A trace of a smirk made its way onto the anti-hero's concealed face before he threw a glance over his shoulder at his assailant.

She was floating in the sky not far above him, but enough so to keep discerning her exact features from being easy. The clothes she usually wore were replaced by the same detestable orange-and-black theme that Terra had worn the day before. Her top was colored halfway in each shade; her skirt was black, and her matching boots were thigh-high. The normally exposed skin on her arms, legs, and midriff was covered by a shiny, metallic armor.

"Hello, Red X," she greeted simply. Her face wore an uncharacteristic smirk; her eyes, glowing for a moment with green energy after she fired the lone starbolt toward his device, dimmed to the normal emerald shade they usually donned within seconds.

So she wasn't going to attack him. Red X grinned to himself, dropping what was left of the communicator and turning to fully face her. "Starfire," he said in return, nodding his head slightly in acknowledgement. His eyes lingered over her changed appearance for a moment, letting a short silence spread itself between the two. "You've come to the dark side after all, I see," he observed, sounding faintly amused by the idea in itself.

Her smirk grew deeper, and her eyes narrowed slightly in accordance, drawing a mildly devious expression upon her lovely face. "I have."

His eyes scanned over her once more while he folded his arms over his chest. She didn't look right, he decided after a moment. There was never anything about her that had particularly screamed "evil" at him, and now that she was donning a darker look, she simply didn't seem natural anymore. It was a shame, really. Here she was, finally willing to simply stand (or float) and converse with him in a thoroughly destroyed sector of a major city, and she'd lost the spark that had initially caught his eye in the process.

"I noticed that you were speaking with someone," the alien girl observed in an innocent tone while she lowered herself slowly to the ground. Landing roughly ten feet away from him, she tossed a lock of ruby hair over her shoulder, shifting her body weight to one side and placing a hand on her opposite hip. "Forgive me, but I have decided that I would rather have you speaking with me."

"Is that so?" X tried and failed to keep the sarcasm out of his tone. He managed to stop himself before beginning to berate her for attacking him the night before. _She's obviously working with the blonde now,_ he reminded himself, recalling all too clearly the pained expression riddled all over the geomancer's face while whatever it was tore through her mind, forcing her to attack the group she once called her friends. The possibility that Starfire could now be in the same situation couldn't escape him. "It's always a pleasure to talk to you, cutie."

Her smirk broadened into a slight grin at the nickname she normally hated so vehemently, inadvertently presenting X with the evidence he needed to confirm his suspicion. "I wish to extend to you an invitation," she informed him, taking a very small but noticeable step forward without wavering her stare. The thief lifted a hidden eyebrow at his assailant, a mischievous smirk playing onto his own face while he watched her eyes dance across his mask. "Surely you have heard of the most fearsome villain ever to inhabit this city."

"Me?" X guessed, straightening his body into a mockery of a noble stance. Starfire giggled, finally breaking her hand away from her hip to cover her mouth while she laughed. The thief was surprised; he'd never drawn laughter out of the alien before. It pleased him, to an extent, but it wasn't the same giggle she used to have. It was a bit darker, and much more in line with a cackle than he ever would have guessed she could manage.

Once she shushed herself, she peeked at him through half-closed eyes, moving her hand ever so slightly to let her fingers rest pensively on her chin. "The next most fearsome villain, then," she smiled, unwilling to tell him that he was wrong. "I am speaking of Slade. The greatest adversary that the Teen Titans have ever known."

"I thought we just decided I was their greatest adversary," the thief mused aloud, but more to himself than as a disagreement to her words. "Yeah, I think I may have heard a thing or two about him. Why do you ask?"

The smirk reappeared on her lovely face; she let her hand slip away from her face entirely, folding her arms over her chest to mirror his stance. "The request I bring to you is from him. He wishes for me to invite you to assist me in destroying the Titans and everything that they stand for."

"Is that so?" He said it in exactly the same sarcastic tone he used the first time. "If Slade wants me to help you, why did he tell the blonde girl to finish me off?"

Her grin faltered, but only slightly. "Terra is weak and highly disobedient to his wishes. She is no longer a part of the plan Slade has concocted. I have taken her place as his assistant."

"Really." Still, X made it plainly clear that he wasn't buying it. "And I'm sure your loyalty will far outlast hers. Less than a day ago, the Titans were your friends. They've been your friends for years. What happened in less than twelve hours to make you want to turn on them?"

Her viridian eyes glared at him. X was surprised; she was actually beginning to look quite menacing. "What has happened between myself and my friends is not a concern of yours."

The thief was satisfied to assume that he was succeeding in his efforts to get under her skin. Rolling his hidden eyes, he sardonically remarked, "My, aren't we just full of surprises today. Is it because Robin didn't jump off the cliff to save you?"

A scowl quickly overtook her face; her stance shifted to a less casual, more haughty one, her head tilting downward to let her eyes narrow at him further. "Perhaps that had a bit to do with my decision," she retorted, obviously unwilling to delve into this type of conversation with the thief. "My reasons are my own. Hold no expectations and you shall receive no 'surprises' from me."

He couldn't help laughing at her, and her eyes narrowed even further at the sound of his distorted chuckle. "I'm going to have to write that one down," he grinned. "I should be the one you're trying to destroy, in that case. I was the one who stopped Robin from diving off after you. Of course, had I let him go, you might be after me anyway—I'd be the one to blame for his death."

"Silence," she snapped in a very low but very stern voice. "As I have told you, my reasons are my own. If you continue exhibiting such insolence, I will be forced to retract my invitation."

"Retract it all you want. I wasn't exactly planning on jumping at the opportunity."

The emerald energy in her eyes finally flared to life; she held her hands up in front of her face in an instant, charging each of them with a starbolt and steadying them toward his skull-shaped mask. "If that is the case, then I may as well end your life now. You are of no further use to me."

He wasn't sure why, but he wasn't panicking. The anger in her eyes only made him want to dig into her further. It was as though she truly didn't have the power to end his life with one swift blast of superhuman energy. "Go ahead," he taunted, ignoring his better judgment while it screamed at him not to test her limit. "You've proved that you don't care about the city—now go ahead and take a life. I dare you to, Starfire…or whoever you are."

The Tamaranian girl pressed her lips together, rolling her tongue in agitation over her teeth and rolling his words over in her mind while she glared at the boy in front of her. He was so casual, so uncaring; the implication he was trying to get across came almost too easily from the minimal effort he put forth. "You are on your own side, as you say, correct?" She blew out an angry sigh, the starbolts in her hands burning more brightly as she did so. "It is humorous—it seems as though you are more on the Teen Titans' side than your own."

"At the moment," he smirked, not so much as flinching at the subtle display of hidden power she demonstrated. "Tell me, before you kill me—am I right?"

"You are presumptuous," she spat back, jutting her fists closer to him until she could see the shine of green light off of his mask. Still, he didn't move; she was beginning to grow visibly furious with his impertinence. "If that is your dying wish, then I will allow you to leave this world quite unsatisfied."

"Being killed by such a beautiful creature is satisfying enough for me."

She was beginning to hate him. The voices in her head urged her to do it—to end his life just as swiftly as she'd demolished half of the city. The starbolts in her fists grew steadily brighter, her eyes narrowing even further, and she found herself thinking of only one thing.

Instead of the immense desire to destroy this annoying human being, she was wondering what his face looked like. Perhaps he was smiling at her, knowing in his heart that she wouldn't be able to go through with it. Perhaps he was terrified, and his eyes were wide with horror at the event that was about to happen. Whatever he was thinking, and whatever he was doing, his stance came across the same as it always had.

Cocky and callous, just like always.

She sighed deeply, lowering her fists and allowing the energy she'd built up to fade away, her body slouching until she found herself sitting dejectedly on the ground. He continued to stand, his arms still folded over his chest, secretly smirking at the defeated-looking girl before him.

"I do not know what it is," she said quietly, her eyes focused squarely on the ground in front of her, "but I cannot force myself to commit such an act. There are these things inside of my mind that are screaming at me, telling me that I cannot walk away while you still stand. They tell me that I must destroy you."

"Then why don't you?"

Despite herself, her lips curled into a small half-smile. "I believe you know the answer to that question as well as I."

She was right; he did. He'd known it in the back of his mind all along. She was too pure-hearted to honestly be able to intentionally take a life, regardless of what was controlling her.

Starfire's eyes briefly closed, her head shaking from one side to the other in a very small motion. "There is not much time. You must go, before—"

"Where is he?" he cut her off. X wasn't about to let her conscious mind slip away from him without gaining at least a bit of knowledge from the girl. She looked up at him helplessly; he tried to fight off the guilty feeling that suddenly welled within him for not doing more to help her in her current situation. But he didn't have time for that. "Tell me where Slade is, and I can go take out his…whatever he's using to control you."

She shook her head slowly. "I do not know," she confessed, the melancholy voice she used only doing more to enhance his guilt. "The last thing that I can remember is damaging the earth that Terra was moving toward me. After that, I only woke up inside the same cavern she held you within. These things in my head that force me to destroy…they had already appeared."

"Great." So Slade must have taken into consideration the possibility that she would be able to temporarily fight off the control he had on her. Maybe what happened to Terra had been unexpected—so maybe Terra could tell him the villain's whereabouts. But the geomancer was more than likely within the Titans' tower at the moment…how could he get the information out of her without the team of superheroes knowing?

He might be forced to—X grimaced at the very thought—team up with the Titans for the time being. All for one silly piece of information he needed to rescue a girl who'd tried to have him thrown in jail on at least a dozen other occasions. Moreover, when the thought entered his mind, the thief wasn't immediately repulsed by the idea. It was almost as though he was _willing_ to do all this for her. What was wrong with him?

A pained grunt from Starfire brought his attention back to the Titan (or former Titan?) in front of him; she'd placed one hand to her forehead, using the other to keep herself balanced on the ground while whatever was happening to her continued to happen. "Go!" she urged, looking up at him with the same panicked eyes Terra had demonstrated the night before. "I do not wish to be forced to fight you!"

"Then fight _him_."

"What—?"

His image fazed out of her sight before she could finish the question. _Coward_, the voice in her head sneered; her eyes unwillingly narrowed at the spot he'd been standing, an intense feeling of disappointment beginning to overwhelm her once she realized she'd passed up a golden opportunity to blast the criminal into oblivion.

Starfire was once again helpless, and X, however reluctantly, was well on his way to a place he'd been a few times before.

* * *

A/N: I'm still not entirely pleased with it…but it's come along greatly from where I had it in the first place. Please let me know what you think, and if everything that's been going on makes sense or not. As I warned before, this fic is halfway a massive idea I've been obsessed with and halfway an experiment in my writing styles. So be sure to let me know how I'm doing. ;) Thanks, guys. 


	5. Raven

**My Own Worst Enemy**  
Chapter 5 – _Raven_

"Beast Boy."

_I don't wanna._ It was the first thought that came into his mind at the annoyingly urgent voice that called to him. He'd been up late, and it was very early. He knew it from the light that bothered the backs of his eyelids while his head rested horizontally on the desk in the medical bay.

"Beast Boy," the voice said again; this time, the changeling felt a nudge on his shoulder, rousing an audible groan from the green teenage hero. "Wake up."

_No._

"Yes." Apparently, he'd voiced his refusal aloud as well as in his mind. The voice was beginning to take on a vaguely irritated tone; Beast Boy was groggy, but not so completely unconscious that he couldn't recognize the voice as Robin's. "Starfire's destroying the city, Beast Boy. We have to go stop her."

He wanted to laugh, but he was still too tired to manage it. _Starfire, destroying the city?_ _Yeah, right. This has gotta be a dream._

"This is _not_ a dream," the voice said heatedly. Still, the changeling made no effort to move; Robin grumbled to himself, resolving to resort to desperate measures to wake him up. "Beast Boy, Terra's dead!"

"_What?_"

The changeling shot up off of the desk immediately, leaving a puddle of drool on the table beneath him. Frantically, his eyes darted toward Terra, and then to the monitors surrounding her hospital bed. His expression changed from panicked to confused in a matter of seconds.

"Terra isn't dead."

"I know." Robin folded his arms crossly and narrowed his eyes at the other boy. "I said it to wake you up."

The look of confusion quickly became a glare. "Dude…not funny."

Robin ignored the changeling's newfound resentment toward him. "I just got a call," he explained, opting to leave out the fact that the call had come from one of the Titans' most notorious enemies. "Starfire is downtown. We've got to get down there and stop her."

Recalling the "dream" he'd just had about being informed that Starfire was destroying the city, Beast Boy frowned, moving his glare from Robin's face to rest his troubled eyes on Terra's sleeping form.

"What about Terra?"

"Terra's still unconscious," Robin said plainly; Beast Boy immediately wanted to kick himself for saying something so stupid. Robin barely noticed. "I'm not saying we should leave her here alone, but maybe we should leave Raven or Cyborg behind…someone who will know what to do if something happens."

_But…_ He didn't know what to say to effectively argue the point against the boy wonder. Robin's mind typically worked in logical patterns, and nothing that made any sense, even to Beast Boy, came to mind as a reason he should be left at the tower instead. The painful truth was that he didn't know how to operate the machinery Terra was hooked up to. If something irregular happened to her, he would have no idea what to do about it. The logical thing to do was to leave one of the other two to watch over her.

Beast Boy wasn't sure if he could ever accept logic as truly being logical. He didn't care what made sense, really. Voicing his wishes was better than begrudgingly following along without protest. "Robin…I want to stay."

The boy wonder had anticipated that Beast Boy would say something to that effect. Surprising even himself, Robin nodded in understanding, watching the changeling's eyes brighten at the acceptance he was given. "I figured you might." He tried a smile despite the circumstances, trying to fight off the feeling that something terrible was happening elsewhere at the very moment. "I already talked to Raven and Cyborg. They both said they wouldn't mind staying with you if you don't feel confident about checking up on the neural analyzer and all that."

The changeling paled slightly at the idea. "Yeah, I'd appreciate that," he admitted, smiling wryly and scratching behind his ear while fighting back a large yawn.

"Okay. I think Raven is coming with me to get Starfire, so Cyborg should be down here in a few minutes."

Beast Boy nodded, simply watching while Robin turned and began to make his way out of the room. Something in the back of his mind stirred suddenly; the changeling found his mouth speaking before he even realized what he was doing. "D'you think you could ask Rae to stay instead?" Beast Boy called after Robin's retreating form.

Robin paused, throwing a mildly surprised glance over his shoulder. He'd been under the impression that the two were currently on bad terms…but hey, if Beast Boy would rather have it that way, then Robin wasn't going to argue. He only wanted to get to the shopping district before Starfire finished with it and moved on—or possibly vanished from their radar altogether once again. "Sure."

With that, the boy wonder finally left the room. Beast Boy sighed, though he didn't know whether it was out of relief or frustration. _Why Rae?_ he asked himself almost lamentably in spite of the answer he already knew. He wanted to apologize to her.

_For what?_ He hadn't been the one in the wrong, had he? Terra was hurt—she'd needed him. Raven could have gone after Starfire herself, especially considering how wasted their joint effort had ended up.

But that didn't matter, he knew. Supposing that Starfire _had_ been in those icy waters, Raven would have never been able to brave them herself without some sort of submarine or other contraption to keep her warm. He was the only one who could turn into a fish at will; Red X was right to call upon him as the one to go to the river in search of the alien heroine.

Beast Boy sighed again, moving his eyes from the empty doorway they lingered upon toward the screen on the wall monitoring Terra's heartbeat. It looked normal enough, to him—those little squiggly lines kept popping up, and the beeping sounded like it was coming at a normal pace for a human being. He wondered how long it would take for the geomancer to wake up. Raven had once kept herself unconscious for a day and a half following an incredibly harsh battle, and that was with constant use of her healing powers.

He shuddered at the thought. Terra didn't _have_ healing powers. She could be out for days.

He hoped with all his might that she wouldn't be.

oOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Azarath…metrion…"

Her eyes squeezed themselves more tightly shut; Raven blew out a quick sigh and then inhaled deeply, releasing the breath slowly and drawing in another before relaxing her scrunched face into a normal, reflective expression.

She tried again. "Azarath…"

The lack of tranquility she felt while murmuring the first of her usual three words was enough to convince her that meditation wasn't going to be working for her at the moment. Only vaguely frustrated, she opened her eyes, squinting slightly against the sunlight she was met with while her eyes adjusted to the change.

She had been surprised, to say the least, when she'd gone to Robin to tell him she was ready to leave only to have him tell her to stay. Her surprise was only doubled when he told her that he was relaying Beast Boy's request. Since then, she had resolved to focus her energy on calming herself down with regards to the green changeling; granted, she wasn't exactly upset with him, but the degree of upset she still felt toward herself would undoubtedly transfer to him once she saw him.

Therefore, when Robin and Cyborg left to start after Starfire, Raven had brought herself up to the roof rather than going down to monitor Terra with Beast Boy. Being in that room, watching his eyes move mournfully over her time and time again, hearing him repeatedly voice his senseless worries about his precious geomancer…it wasn't quite the empath's idea of a good time. If anything should happen to Terra that would require her attention, she knew Beast Boy would come for her. There were only so many places to look, after all.

Meditation was usually the only means the empath ever needed to help herself gather her emotions. Very few occasions had proved themselves too psychologically taxing to render her meditation entirely ineffective; Raven guessed that she could probably count the instances on one hand. This, she decided, would have to be added to that list.

What was it that was bothering her? She didn't know, exactly, and the uncertainty made it all the more frustrating. She knew that a big part of it was her failure to sense the being that had forced Terra to attack her former friends. One thing that she did learn through the lack of another presence in Terra's mind was that whatever was controlling her couldn't have been the result of a psychic power. Whether it was a relic or some sort of technological device she couldn't be sure. When the geomancer woke up, Raven decided, she would need to have a talk with her…maybe the blonde would remember something about the event that could help lead to the answer.

But even after working through the possibilities in her mind, the empath still didn't feel any more at ease than she was when she began. She didn't want to consider it, but she knew that the only other explanation was that she had some sort of personal issue regarding either Terra or Beast Boy.

For her sanity's sake, she'd chosen to focus mainly on her conflicts with Terra. This was where she came to a roadblock—all of her issues with Terra were buried long ago. Sure, she hadn't trusted the girl, and she'd been sourly betrayed after learning to trust…but, in Raven's opinion, the geomancer had redeemed herself by choosing to save the city from a massive volcanic eruption—saving thousands of people—over running away to simply save herself. Defeating Slade had helped, but not as much as one might think; the personal sacrifice Terra made spoke volumes. Though, she had to admit, Raven was glad to be rid of the man…however short-lived her relief had been.

Coming to this conclusion left Raven with only one grim option to consider: the problem must lie in some aspect of her relationship with Beast Boy. But exactly where was the right place to look for the issue she needed to resolve?

Beast Boy—as much as Raven denied it in front of any and all other life forms—was without a doubt one of the closest friends she had ever had. He annoyed her much of the time, yes, but not quite as intensely as she usually pretended. When she'd first met him, she'd told him he was funny, and it was a mistake she still regretted to this day. It seemed that at times his life's mission was to make her smile. In fact, on more than one occasion, he'd explicitly declared that it was. He would never know it, but just hearing him say that often brought a smile to her conscious mind; she was important to him, and he made that clear. She doubted that there was a better feeling in the world than knowing how important she was to someone else.

But she knew that she wasn't _just_ important to Beast Boy. She was important to her other teammates, as well. Robin, Cyborg, Starfire…they'd all made sacrifices for her, and she knew that they all loved her as though she was family. The bond of trust that held the team together was stronger than any weapon or power that any of them possessed; she cared about each of her teammates, as they each cared about her.

So…why was it that Raven let herself laugh at the sad attempts at jokes Starfire tried to make? Why would she smile to herself while eyeing a smear of oil across Cyborg's robotic face? How could Robin draw a grin from her with the corniest of wisecracks, and yet Beast Boy could not?

_You never let yourself smile for him._

The inner voice that accusingly came to her caused the corners of her mouth to angle themselves downward. It was true, but…why? Some sort of moral dilemma, perhaps? Was laughing at Beast Boy's jokes so wrong? Starfire did it all the time, even when she didn't get them (although, with Beast Boy, not many people ever did). Why couldn't Raven bring herself to do the same?

"_Come on, Raven, you know I'm hilarious. And I'm not gonna give up until I get you to smile."_

She remembered wanting to laugh when he'd said that to her, but she did not. She'd only glared out the window, feigning annoyance and inwardly grinning to herself. He was so determined…and she liked the attention.

But where was his attention now? Not on the rooftop with her, that much was for sure. It was several stories beneath her, sitting in a stuffy hospital room with one tiny window on its side and focused entirely on a blonde, teenage geomancer who'd stolen his attention away from her on more than one occasion before.

So that was it. Raven came to the realization almost reluctantly, staring out over the shimmering water and still sitting cross-legged on the tower's roof. She drew in a breath and held it for a moment before slowly exhaling, closing her eyes along with losing her breath. It was several seconds before she could bring herself to draw in another.

_I'm jealous._

It seemed ridiculous, but the agonized feeling in her chest was slowly dimming, replaced by an overwhelming feeling of hurt within seconds. There was no other explanation—at least, not a sensible one that she could think of at the moment.

_I'm jealous of Terra. Jealous over Beast Boy._

The thought was accompanied by a reflexive shudder.

…_This can't possibly be right._

The creaky sound of a metal door swinging open suddenly swallowed her attention; Raven opened her eyes and glanced behind her, instantly meeting the meek stare of the green changeling standing in the doorway. The empath opened her mouth to snap at him, but her heart caught in her throat, effectively cutting off her attempt at speech. She merely blinked at him instead, her mind reeling while he offered her a cheesy grin.

_Please don't tell me I'm thinking what I think I'm thinking._

"Hey, Rae," the boy said uneasily, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly and letting loose a few nervous chuckles. "I, um…Terra's neuro-transitive monitor or whatever it is…kind of looks like it's acting funny…"

The words came from his mouth hesitantly and uncertainly; Raven lifted an eyebrow, silently wondering whether his concerns were genuine or nothing more than an excuse to gain his precious geomancer the watchful eye of an expert. Inwardly, she snorted, a string of wildly furious words running through her head at the thought of being manipulated into taking care of Terra. No one manipulated Raven—_especially_ not Beast Boy.

His worried smile, however, was hardly the epitome of a scheming con artist. He looked like a mess of emotions were plaguing him, as well; his expression showed her everything from worry to dread along with his usual hint of goofiness. Timidly, he appended his nervous explanation for his appearance with a hopeful question. "D'you think…maybe…you could come down and take a look at her?"

She opened her mouth, intending to snap at the boy. She wanted to tell him that Terra was fine, that he was overreacting, and not to come back unless one of her vital signs dropped completely off the charts. None of that was what came out when she found her voice.

"Sure. I'll be down in a second."

Beast Boy smiled, his nervousness visibly subsiding, and nodded at Raven's response before hurriedly retreating back through the doorway. The changeling hadn't so much as pulled the steel door the entire way shut before the empath's hand smacked her forehead in complete exasperation.

_You are pathetic,_ she berated herself, her fingers massaging at her forehead while her eyes glared narrowly at her palm. _Not gonna be manipulated into taking care of Terra, huh? Absolutely pathetic._

She hated what this implied about the theory she'd come up with. The twisting feeling in her gut only enhanced her frustration.

_There's no way I'm thinking what I think I'm thinking._

oOoOoOoOoOoOo

Cyborg shook his head, moving his eyes up from the sonic scanner built into his left arm to meet Robin's worried stare. "Nothing."

The boy wonder mirrored Cyborg's action, emitting a quiet "tch" of annoyance from his throat and throwing his glare toward the ground. "I can't believe it," he complained aloud against his usual tendencies to keep his gripes to himself. "Fifteen minutes and she's gone? What happened to Red X?"

The other Titan shrugged, looking to the halfway demolished buildings of the former shopping district the pair were standing amongst. Judging by the damage, she'd had a lot more than fifteen minutes to handle this part of town. "X must have caught her right when she was finishing with it," the half-robot guessed. His eyes moved back toward Robin; the boy was still glaring downward, arms folded bitterly over his chest while he hatefully stared at the at the pavement beneath his feet. "I don't know what she must have done to him."

"Hopefully killed him," Robin grumbled more to himself than to Cyborg. The older boy heard him and shot him a momentary worried stare; in truth, they both knew that Robin hadn't meant what he said. With all of the others missing, however, the young hero was much more open with his thoughts—for as long as the team had been together, Cyborg had been the only one he would allow himself to make such comments around, though neither of them exactly knew why. "Is there some sort of scanner you can run to see where the last place she hit was? That way, we can at least see if she stopped after dealing with him."

The half-robot nodded, retuning his attention to his arm and punching a sequence of keys into it while he spoke to Robin. "I can program it to detect heat trails. I'd guess it'll serve the same purpose. I mean, those starbolts of hers are basically just balls of heat, right?"

"Yeah." _And they're not a lot of fun to get hit with,_ Robin silently added, thinking back to the training stints he'd done with Starfire that hadn't quite gone according to plan. One particularly intense session had ended with burns all across what was exposed of his right arm. She'd apologized relentlessly for her recklessness for weeks afterwards, even after the burns were healed. He'd never really considered what damage she might cause a normal human being if her starbolts were directed at them intentionally. "Maybe we should see if we can find Red X, too."

Cyborg chose not to comment, resolving to merely smile to himself while the boy wonder looked elsewhere. He knew that the thief wasn't exactly Robin's favorite person in the world, but Robin was still Robin—he couldn't wish undue harm upon anyone who'd once helped him out without a very good reason to. A successful beep from his arm told Cyborg that the scanner was ready for use. Robin glanced up, as well, watching while Cyborg shifted his position into different directions to get a good survey of the area.

A few seconds went by silently; a frown appeared on Cyborg's face that Robin quickly copied. "The hottest thing in the area, besides yours and my body heat, is just past this building we're in front of. Very small trace of heat on the ground. I think it might be the communicator X was talking to you from."

"And that's it? No blast in the ground or anything around there? She didn't even fire at him?"

Cyborg shook his head. "If she did, she _hit_ him." The emphasis he used was enhanced by a brief widening of his eyes; the expression and tone could only translate to mean certain death for the black-clad thief.

Robin's teeth dug into the inside of his lip while he rolled the information around in his mind. So Star and X hadn't fought. Did she just let him go? Did he teleport away before she could hit him? No—she would have at least blasted at the empty air if he'd done that. X had a tendency to rattle the enemies he found himself against; there was no way he could have just left her without so much as a snide comment to be offended by. Surely they had _some_ sort of encounter. But if it wasn't a violent one…?

"Maybe she teamed up with him?" the boy wonder guessed, his eyes moving helplessly toward Cyborg's; the half-robot, in turn, shrugged nonchalantly. "I guess it's the only theory we have to go on for now."

"We probably shouldn't start theorizing before we get a little more evidence," Cyborg pointed out, earning a thoughtful frown from his younger teammate. "Whatever happened, it happened pretty quick. Could have been a team-up, or it could have been a throw-down. Just because there's no heat blast doesn't mean she didn't swing a couple of good punches at him."

_True enough,_ Robin sighed to himself. "Let's look around a little bit more," he suggested, casting a hopeful glance toward his friend. "Maybe there's something we missed."

Cyborg wanted to tell the boy that the best thing they could do was return to the tower—to regroup and get the input of the other Titans—but he knew all too well the look in the young hero's hidden eyes. "_I care about her,"_ it plainly said. "_I need you to help me find her."_ How could he refuse a plea like that?

"Sure thing, little man," the half-robot grinned, reaching out to pat Robin lightly on the shoulder. The boy wonder only gave a small smile at the action, waiting while Cyborg turned to make his way toward the rear of the building before beginning to follow.

He knew that he was lucky to have such good friends…and even good enemies, when it was called for. Beast Boy and Raven spent all that time searching an empty forest, Beast Boy alone had stayed up for hours searching on the computer systems, and Red X—quite possibly the boy he hated more than any other—had even gone so far as to call him to let him know that she was alive. He was going to have to think up some way to repay them all for what they were doing for him once all of this was over.

oOoOoOoOoOoOo

_You are wasting my time._

That was what she wanted to say, but the only thing that came to her lips was a small frown while her eyes scanned yet another time over the monitors showing Terra's vital signs. The unconscious geomancer lay somewhere to her left; Beast Boy's nervous form was visible out of the right corner of her eye. Raven felt more and more like the corner of an awkward triangle as the moment stretched on. She could feel the changeling's eyes on her, and she hated every second of that feeling.

"Everything looks normal to me," she said reasonably, finally breaking her stare away from the assortment of screens before her to look to the green boy beside her. Still, he looked worried…almost as though he was never really concerned about the status of the machines connected to the blonde at all. Raven shrugged off the suspicion before she let her mind take hold of it. "If something happens, there will be a little red light that'll flash on. If the light comes on, you have to get me _immediately_."

She said it so gravely that Beast Boy physically shuddered, unwilling to think of what might happen if he failed to comply. Raven seemed to take no notice.

"Otherwise…if things just look like this…" She paused, waving a hand toward the monitors to indicate the image of normalcy. "…then there isn't any reason to panic."

"Oh," he said, feeling dumb and sounding even dumber. He saw the subtle look of incredulity that passed onto Raven's face before the empath slowly nodded and began to draw her hood back over her head. From there, the changeling's instinctive panic took over; he took a small step forward, reaching one hand out as though he was going to grab onto her shoulder. But past experience had taught him better than that.

Instead, he simply froze in that position, as did she. They stared at each other—Beast Boy in mid-reach, Raven in mid-cloak—for what felt to him like an eternity. The silence that consumed them was already strained; his mind raced in an effort to find something to say to break it.

As usual, his effort went by in vain. Raven blinked and quickly finished her motion, taking a step away and effectively causing Beast Boy to awkwardly draw his hand back all at once. Still, he fumbled for something to say to her—something to keep her from leaving him alone with the unconscious ex-Titan once again. "I, uh…thought that maybe…"

"Don't think, Beast Boy. You're not cut out for it."

Despite himself, his mouth cracked into a tiny grin at the dry, sarcastic tone he was used to hearing from the empath. Her lips were perfectly straight, not smiling and not frowning; her eyes, however, showed him that she was smiling as well.

But not on the outside. Raven never smiled on the outside. Never at him, at least. It was something he'd grown quite used to, and it no longer bothered him in the least. And it was a good thing, because if he let it, he would be in low spirits for a greater chunk of his time than he cared to think of.

"Good one," he smiled, straightening his body to look at her less frantically. He needed to look cool, calm, and collected, he decided…even if he didn't really feel any of those things himself. "Look, do you…maybe wanna play cards or something? I'm sort of lonely down here, but I don't want to leave Terra alone…"

Raven watched his eyes move toward the geomancer, who was now positioned behind her. She could see the longing in his face; she could tell how desperately he wanted her to wake up. When his eyes moved back to meet hers, though, the expression wasn't gone. Her eyes widened slightly as a new thought occurred to her: perhaps he only longed to have someone with him. _Anyone_.

Not just Terra.

"I…sure," she said before she let herself think too much about it. More than likely, she would regret this decision later, she knew. But the simple fact was that he didn't want to be alone…and quite frankly, she didn't want to be, either.

Beast Boy noted the look of slight surprise on her face, but quickly passed it off as a reaction to his willingness to play a card game with her. Raven always won at card games. She was an empath; she knew just from his devious expression when he had a lucky hand. He'd tried his best poker faces on her without any luck over the years.

But he liked it when she won. She smiled when she won. Granted, it was an "I just took all of your money" smile…but it was a smile nonetheless.

"Great," the changeling breathed, sounding much more relieved at her agreement than he'd meant to. Nervously, he eyed Raven, expecting a lifted eyebrow at his tone, but she pretended not to notice.

Instead, the empath only made her way toward the table she'd sat at along with Cyborg the night before, pausing before she sat down to throw a glance over her shoulder toward Beast Boy. From there, she took in the view of the changeling's lopsided smile alongside Terra's unconscious body.

His eyes weren't on the geomancer behind him. They were on her. Raven couldn't help smiling to herself at the observation, ignoring the tiny voice in her head that was telling her not to be so selfish. After all, Terra would eventually wake up, and where would Beast Boy's attention be then? She resolved to herself while she broke her stare away from the pair and settled herself into her seat that she would have to enjoy it for as long as she could before she once again lost it to the blue-eyed blonde.

* * *

A/N: A bit shorter than the rest, and not much plot development…but I wasn't going for plot development just yet. ;) I apologize for taking a week to get this out…I had trouble with the last part, but then I ended up clipping the last part entirely and focusing on the characters rather than the plot. Hope it doesn't seem like a total waste of time reading.

One thing I do feel obligated to mention is that my work schedule is getting a bit more hectic due to other peoples' vacations this and next month, so unfortunately it'll be a bit of time before I can update quickly again. A week is a good estimate for a wait time for the next part…but I'll try to work on it as much as possible. :) Getting into the plot is exciting. I can't wait to write it out.


	6. Fault

A/N: Sorry, guys…I took a bit longer than I expected. This chapter is especially long, though. About twice as long as the others, in fact. :) So that's good, at least. I don't know how much free time I'll be having next week, so I'm not even going to make an estimate for the next chapter just yet. Anyway, this one isn't as BB/Rae oriented, so some of you will like that. Plus, we all love a good Red X appearance. ;) I really hope you all like it.

* * *

**My Own Worst Enemy**  
Chapter 6 – _Fault_

"I never win at this game."

Beast Boy offered the empath a lopsided smile, stacking his large pile of playing cards as discreetly as possible while she forlornly stared at the small stack that was hers. The small, white table, which had at one point been set up on the side of the room opposite the hospital bed, now stood directly by Terra's bedside. One chair was set up next to her pillow; the other was positioned just beside her feet. Beast Boy and Raven respectively sat in each, both Titans organizing their messy piles and growing either more gleeful or more despondent while they eyed the size of their piles. Five additional cards were lying face-down on the side of the table closest to Terra, serving only the purpose of entertaining the changeling's unpretentious imagination. "It's a game of luck, Raven," he explained, chuckling lightly while he spoke. "The only one I could think of that you couldn't play off of my expression."

Despite herself, Raven let a small smile slip onto her face. He was right; she usually did exactly that when playing him—or any other Titan—in a card game. War, however, was not your typical card game. Nor was it much fun, in Raven's opinion, but she'd agreed to play it anyway, knowing exactly the reason the changeling had chosen it. "There are plenty of games that rely on luck rather than skill. Poker is a game of luck, you know."

"But poker takes strategy, too. If you don't know what you've got, you can't win at it. That's where my poker face always fails me—you can always tell when I've got a good hand."

Raven smirked to herself. "You don't _have_ a poker face, Beast Boy. Even Starfire can tell when you're about to spring a flush on us."

A large grin covered the changeling's face while he mentally acknowledged the embarrassing fact. He was entirely unable to hide his euphoria when he knew he was going to win at _anything_, not just a card game. His grin only broadened when he moved his stare from his cards to meet the empath's face; Raven's eyes were gleaming with silent laughter and suppressed smiles, just like they always were when he managed to draw her into conversation. There weren't many things he enjoyed more than looking into her eyes and seeing that she was genuinely _happy_—especially doing something that he was doing with her.

But still, there was something else there; something that showed him some odd, unrecognizable emotion in her expression. Absently, his eyes scanned over her face another time while his mind worked through it, trying to pinpoint the strange look in her eyes before she had a chance to cast it away. She never admitted to him, or to anyone, when she was troubled—and it was a characteristic about her that bothered him to no end. He hated it when she withdrew herself; she hadn't, yet, but judging by the glint in her eyes, it would only be a matter of time. He knew had to tell her why he'd asked her to stay down here _eventually_—preferably before the other Titans returned to the tower. He merely wasn't sure if he could work up the nerve to do so.

Not that it should have been an intimidating task in the least. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry; for what, he still wasn't sure. But if something was going to cause her to snap at him like she had the night before, then he definitely wanted to apologize for it. He didn't like it when Raven was angry with him, and he liked it even less when she made her anger clear through the hostile tone of her voice.

_But why?_ Why should it matter? It shouldn't, he knew—neither of them were exactly creatures of nobility the previous evening, but neither were to blame for any of the catastrophic events that had occurred. If anything, Raven should be the one feeling the need to apologize to him for the blatant enmity she'd demonstrated toward him. Yet here he was, sitting opposite her and staring vacantly at her increasingly confused expression, trying desperately to think of something to say…something that would stop him from feeling so badly about something he couldn't even properly place in his mind.

Raven watched him while the goofy smile slowly fell away from his face, her brow furrowing slightly at the thoughtful expression that replaced it. She frowned at him; he didn't seem to notice. Something must have been on his mind, she quickly surmised. Beast Boy had never been particularly skilled at thinking and carrying on conversation at once. This instance coincided seamlessly with his usual trend of spacing out when his thoughts overtook him.

She tried clearing her throat. No response from the changeling. A quiet sound of annoyance emitted from her throat, and still nothing. Raven softly sighed to herself before lifting an eyebrow in Beast Boy's direction.

"Something bothering you?"

The question came to the changeling as a surprise; his eyes forcibly snapped away from the jewel on the empath's forehead, their panicked appearance meeting her concerned stare in seconds. "I—uh, no," he stammered, wishing desperately that he had the same degree of control over his emotions as she did—nothing would have pleased him more than to be able to fight away the blush that was quickly flooding over his features.

From her expression, he could tell that Raven wasn't the least bit fooled—not that he could blame her. The reddening tint of his skin did nothing to help his case of denial; the concern in her eyes slowly shifted into a quizzical glare. The expression itself spoke volumes to Beast Boy, and he felt himself pale slightly at the silent ultimatum she gave to him: _Tell me willingly, or I'll force it out of you._

But he wasn't ready…he didn't even know why he felt this way, let alone how he was supposed to go about talking about it. The narrowing of Raven's eyes only worked to enhance the uneasy feeling that was starting to get the best of him; nervously, he glanced toward Terra's unconscious form, finding himself almost wishing that something drastic would happen to her monitors that would draw the empath's attention away from the look on his face. In spite of the mental berating he immediately threw upon himself for the thought, he glanced hopefully toward the screens on the walls, more than slightly disappointed to find no relief for his anxiety.

"Well?" Raven prodded, once again successfully breaking his attention away from his thoughts and drawing his stare into her narrow eyes. He visibly started upon seeing her expression; Raven bit the inside of her lip, vaguely regretting the glare she was shooting at him, but the simple fact was that old habits died hard. It had always been her experience that menacing eyes worked wonders in getting the changeling to open up. She'd never once had a glare fail her.

But then again, there was always a first time for everything.

"It's nothing, really," Beast Boy tried, forcing a smile that conveyed all of his usual nervousness without any of the usual confidence. "Just…some stuff about Terra, that's all."

It sounded logical enough…so why wasn't she buying it? Raven lifted an eyebrow, her curious expression masked only lightly by the shadow her hood cast upon her face. He still looked incredibly nervous; the glance he'd thrown toward Terra was hardly a glance of concern for the geomancer. It looked to Raven more like an "I wish you could help me" expression than one that said "I wish you would wake up."

Hidden as her face may have been, Beast Boy knew that she wasn't quite convinced with his excuse. He let out a quiet sigh, his eyes straying toward the discarded playing cards strewn across the table while he tried one last time to gather his thoughts. _Now or never,_ he reasoned to himself, taking a deep breath of confidence before looking back toward the empath in front of him. "I guess I sort of was hoping I could talk to you a little…about whatever happened yesterday…between us."

There was nothing particularly accusing about what he'd just said. As a matter of fact, Raven knew that he meant nothing hurtful by it—it was nothing more than an innocent request for conversation on a topic that wasn't yet quite comfortable. Nevertheless, she felt like she'd been stabbed by his words. "_Between us."_ Just the tone of his voice, perhaps, or the sad expression that flickered across his face… Raven shook her head quickly, trying to clear her mind of the rampant thoughts before they could devour her. "What about yesterday?" she asked, trying hard to sound casual and feeling anything but satisfied by the resulting tone.

"I mean…everything about yesterday." He frowned, disliking the uncharacteristic tone of remorse his voice was carrying, but Beast Boy suspected that there wasn't much of anything he could do to change it. Initiating a heartfelt conversation wasn't really one of his strong points; he was terrible at it, in fact. But if he didn't try to fix things, then the uneasy feeling he got when he looked at her would never be acknowledged…and what would he do if it never went away? "About Star, and…just the way I acted…about Terra…"

"You had every right, Beast Boy. Terra's important to you."

She surprised herself with the monotone she managed with the sentence; the pang of jealousy that surged through her was almost enough to shoot a wave of dark energy toward every electronic device in the room. Really, she didn't think he'd had any right at all, but how was she supposed to tell him that without starting an argument that would quite possibly end in a devastating explosion—and a _real_ one, at that?

Still, she forced herself to offer him a small smile, lying through her teeth while she attempted to console the desperate-looking changeling through his guilt. "There was nothing wrong with what happened. Nothing you did, at least."

Again, he found himself wishing that he was as stupid as the others thought he was. He would have missed the trace of a frown that overtook her face for the split second it had been there. He could have brushed off the fake tone of her voice as a figment of his imagination. Blocking out the memory of her angry glare when she dove off the cliff to search for Starfire would have been all too easy.

But he wasn't that stupid, and he wasn't so naïve to think that everything was all right just because Raven said it was. Maybe he wasn't an empath, but he knew his friends well enough to be able to tell when they were lying.

"Rae…don't pretend with me. Please."

She could tell by his tone that he wasn't going to be easily fooled by her feeble attempt at a confident appearance. The false smile quickly fell away from her lips; she only stared at the changeling while he stared back into her, a sad look of regret passing onto his face while he forced himself to go on.

"I know you pretty well…I know you're upset with me. I don't want you to pretend that everything's okay. I know it's not."

Raven's mouth fell open, any words she intended to speak with it neglecting to come along. A few nonsense syllables were all she managed to sputter for a few seconds until she found her voice. "I don't know what you're talking about." Beast Boy lifted an eyebrow in skeptical disbelief; Raven found the presence of mind to narrow her eyes at him. "Everything's _fine_."

"Everything's _not_ fine. I'm not an idiot, Rae."

"Could have fooled me."

He winced slightly, wounded by the verbal jab, but pushed it out of his mind before he could let it get to him. She was only angry—Raven tended to lash out when she was angry. Concern wasn't her style, and if a member on the team showed any toward her, they were more likely to find themselves angry with her than to successfully offer her any comforting words. "Look, I'm not trying to start a war or anything. I just want to apologize. So, Raven…I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it, Beast Boy. There's nothing to worry about."

"Yes, there is. I hate it when you do this, Rae. You always pretend there isn't a problem, and then you sit there and meditate about it for days and refuse to do _anything_ with _anyone_. I don't want that to happen again—I want to _talk_ about it. Is that so hard?"

She didn't respond; instead, she abruptly pushed herself away from the table, letting the sliding noise of the chair while she got up answer him for her. Beast Boy only watched, dumbfounded, until she'd made her way halfway across the room. Then, he quickly pushed himself out of his seat, as well.

"Raven! Stop it!"

"I'm not having this conversation in here," she snapped at him without so much as glancing back. Her hand fell upon the doorknob before she shot the changeling a look that could have killed him. "I'm sure it's the last thing _Terra_ would want to hear while she's waking up."

She retreated through it before she even finished the sentence. Beast Boy caught the door before it could close him out, following the empath into the small control room just outside the hospital bay. It clicked noisily shut behind him and left the forgotten card game alone with its unconscious player.

x-X-x

Robin's eyes were closed behind his mask while each of his hands massaged either of his temples. Cyborg was stooped near the ground in front of him, prodding gently at a melted piece of plastic. It took every ounce of willpower in the boy wonder's body to keep him from shouting his frustration for the world to hear.

Not that anyone was around to hear it, anyway. This part of town was virtually empty; Robin couldn't imagine much of the rest of the city being very different. If there was one thing he could say about the people of Jump, it was that they were extremely quick to find shelter when devastating attacks from psychotic evildoers struck the city. It was probably only all the more terrifying to see one of the Teen Titans acting as said psychopath this time.

Although the citizens of Jump had endured such a feeling before—when Terra had done the same thing that Starfire was now apparently doing. At the thought, Robin frowned to himself; there was no way she could be doing this of her own free will. She was too innocently sweet, too charming. It wasn't in her nature to destroy—not intentionally, at least—and he couldn't even imagine her deliberately joining forces with Slade. Assuming that was who Red X had meant by the "pumpkin king" comment.

"I don't know, man." Cyborg shook his head lightly; Robin opened his eyes, looking downward toward his older teammate while the half-robot gave him a sympathetic stare. "This is _it_. No evidence of any other blasts, no bloodstains, _nothing_."

The boy wonder was dumbfounded. How could that be all? How could X have managed to get away without a single shot fired by the alien beauty? The thought of the thief striking some sort of agreement with her rather than sarcastically digging into her as much as he possibly could wasn't even fathomable. There was _no way_ the other boy would have left without saying _something_ snide—_something_ that should have made her want to blast him.

"At least we know she wasn't hurt?" he offered almost hopefully, lifting a quizzical eyebrow at his friend. Cyborg couldn't help cracking a smile at the comment—they both knew that Starfire wasn't the one they should worry about getting hurt in a confrontation between the two. Robin smiled to himself, as well, before breaking his eyes away from Cyborg and looking to the sky. "I guess there's no way we can track her, is there?"

"We could try running a heat sweep. I don't think I could do one large enough from here, though. We'd have to go back to the tower."

Robin visibly winced. Returning to the tower empty-handed was one of the last things he wanted to do. "There isn't anything else we can do here?" he asked desolately, his hidden eyes probing the skies while he spoke as though he expected to see her tanned figure appear at any moment. As if he thought that, if they waited for long enough, she would reappear and make herself known to them.

Cyborg's regretfully honest tone dashed any hopes he might have let himself develop. "I don't think so, man. Not anything that would be very helpful, anyway."

He was defeated, and he quickly found that admitting it to himself didn't make it any less difficult to accept. "Okay," he sighed; even while he acknowledged the half-robot's suggestion, his mind still raced to find an excuse to stay. He knew full well that any further amount of time spent here would more than likely become time entirely wasted, but…he just had a _feeling_.

Raven had discussed these "feelings" with him once before. "_Don't ignore it,"_ she'd told him very gravely. "_It's instinctive; it can't always be explained. But if you push it out of your mind, you'll regret it later. Trust me."_

He remembered the way she closed her eyes when she spoke the last words; the pained look that passed for an instant over her features was too intense to ignore. Raven evidently knew what it was like to betray such foreboding thoughts, and he had grimaced slightly at the idea of falling prey to a similar stab of remorse. Now he was once again faced with the same problem he'd been faced with then. In reality, it wasn't so much a problem—Robin already knew what he wanted to do. The only thing he had to figure out was how to convince Cyborg that it was right.

By the time his senses returned to him, Robin found himself quite alone in the back alley he and his friend had been standing in. The burnt piece of plastic was gone; the boy wonder blinked, turning around just in time to see Cyborg's hulking form disappear around the corner of the building. "Hey, wait up," he called out automatically, starting after the other hero as soon as the words left his mouth.

He hadn't gone two steps before something hit him _hard_ in the back. Robin shouted a mangled curse, topping forward and finding himself sprawled on the pavement in seconds. Instinctively, he rolled to his side, landing neatly on his knee and balancing himself in a crouched position on the ground with his hand and foot, glaring at the spot he'd been standing in an effort to intimidate whatever had hit him. His hidden eyes widened slightly at the sight he was met with.

Nothing. There was nothing there—just empty air and a building a few yards away. "What the…?" he absently asked himself, pushing himself up off of the ground to stare in confusion at the brick wall he was facing. His mind raced—what could have struck him that would be able to get away fast enough to avoid being seen? "X?" he guessed, grabbing at the only name he could come up with of a villain who regularly employed cloaking technology.

The building didn't confirm nor did it deny his deduction. Robin blinked at it, waiting a few seconds for a response before uneasily glancing around himself, wondering whether the attacker was still beside him. His eyes were cast off to his left when he felt a fist collide with his right arm. His guard wasn't up; he barely kept his footing while he whirled around, stumbling backwards and holding up a hand to deflect another attack should one come to find him.

Again, there was nothing there. Robin was beginning to get a little freaked out. "Slade?" he guessed again, careful with his tone not to sound too completely clueless. It wasn't like the Titans' arch-nemesis to use any sort of stealth power to its fullest extent when messing with one of the members; typically, Slade liked to make his presence known, thriving on the fact that his very name struck fear into the hearts of the average city resident. Granted, Robin wasn't exactly your everyday, average citizen…but still, Slade had never hidden himself when initiating a fight of any kind with the young hero. Robin couldn't imagine a reason he would want to start now.

"Robin!"

The boy wonder's attention snapped back toward the corner that Cyborg had just disappeared around; the taller boy was hurrying back, a slightly panicked expression on his face. The alarms were quick to go off in the young hero's mind; concerned, he turned to face the half-robot fully, temporarily forgetting the invisible attacker he'd just been attempting to decipher the identity of. "What is it?"

"It's the heat sensor. Someone's here. _Right_ here."

"Right _here_," a familiar, female voice jeered suddenly. Before either Titan could even turn around, a blast of emerald light engulfed Cyborg's metallic body. The older boy cried out helplessly, his body flinging backwards and colliding with the building behind the teens. A shower of bricks immediately rained over him; another curse escaped his mouth before the crumbling wall effectively covered the hero up.

Robin's eyes followed his friend in an unbalanced blend of shock and horror. He watched the debris tumble over his helpless form, unable to make even the smallest movement; his voice, in turn, failed to shout out the fallen hero's name in panic as he normally would have. The caped crusader was entirely torn—half of him wanted to rush to Cyborg's aid while the other half wanted to turn back and face the attacker.

But he didn't know what he would do if he turned around. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who the assailant was, and Robin wasn't sure if he was able to face her without letting the encounter run off in a million different directions. He'd been hoping to find her, but not like this. Not with these circumstances. Now, he knew that he should be challenging the wrongdoer who had just attacked his friend—but how could he do that when the attacker was such a close friend? He only wanted the moment to freeze in time forever; that way, he would never have to make the choice, nor would he need to deal with the consequences of his actions.

The time-stopping machine he and his friends had once raced to disarm, however, turned out to be nothing more than a decoy, and Robin was unfortunately left to realize that time was not currently frozen forever. The girl standing behind him cleared her throat pointedly as though to enhance his awareness of the fact; he visibly winced, squinting his eyes shut in another effort to will her away. She would seemingly have none of it. "Hello, Robin," she innocuously sang, her melodic voice sounding just as endearing as ever.

He found himself almost wishing that she'd adapted to a more malicious and menacing tone—it was too difficult to be upset with her when she sounded just like the beautiful princess he'd always known. "Starfire," he dully responded, still unwilling to face her; she cleared her throat again as if she was demanding his eyes upon her. Robin couldn't quite bring himself to comply.

She waited a few seconds before she went on; he could only presume that she was waiting for him to look at her, and surely she was disappointed that he wouldn't give her the pleasure. "I apologize for my hostile approach with our friend Cyborg," she said in a tone that was almost careful. "I merely wished to speak with you alone."

His eyes opened almost automatically; he resisted the urge to shoot her an incredulous glare. Instead, he kept his stare on the newly formed hole in the wall of the adjacent building, letting a small smile play disbelievingly onto his lips while he formed a string of retorts in his mind. It was a pity, really, that he cared far too much for this girl to let himself rattle off whatever snide rejoinders popped into his head. "Nice way to go about saying so," he idly remarked, suppressing the harsher snappish comments he wanted to use for the time being. If it turned out that she was doing this of her own free will—if she wasn't being controlled as Terra was—he would be more than happy to bring them into action.

She seemed oblivious to his sarcasm. She seemed oblivious, in truth, to the fact that what she'd done was more than simply impolite. Vocalized or not, Starfire disregarded his comments, shrugging them off in an uncaring manner that would have enraged him had he been watching her. "I have been informed that you were rather willing to bring an end to your own life for a mere attempt to save mine."

This was an observation he hadn't been expecting to hear. Surprised, he automatically looked at her, grimacing and tearing his eyes away the instant they met her petite form. The orange and black she wore hardly complimented her—though, admittedly, Robin knew he may have only felt that way because of his hatred toward the man the colors represented. Reluctantly, he set his stare on her eyes, hoping that the familiar, emerald shine would blind him to her difference in attire. "You mean last night?" he questioned in spite of the obvious "yes" that he would surely receive in response. He opted not to wait for her to answer. "I would have done anything to save you, Star. You have no idea how relieved I am just to see you alive."

Her clothes may have been drastically different, but her face still remained the same. The smile that formed on her lips relaxed the boy wonder considerably, allowing him to relax his tense muscles and stand to face her more comfortably. Still, he tried to keep his guard up; there was no telling what she would do next, especially if she was nothing more than a puppet being controlled by some greater force. "The fall alone would have killed you. You must have been aware of this, yes?"

He couldn't fight away the smile that wanted to come over his face. If she was a puppet, she was a stunningly convincing one, and just as gorgeous as ever. Looking into her eyes showed him nothing more than her typical shining expression, complete with the modest smile to match. "I didn't even think about it," he replied honestly. A twinge of embarrassment crept into his voice while he continued, "I would have gone after you if someone hadn't stopped me."

"The Red X," she said knowingly, giving a small nod to indicate that she already knew. Her action brought him back to reality—back to realizing that she may not have complete control of her mind. She and X _had_ had an encounter, he concluded; it was only much less violent than he would have expected. "Surely you will suspect, as he did, that the reason for my betrayal is that you failed to rescue me."

"…_as he did…"_ Robin shuddered discreetly, wondering if the past tense she used could have implied that the thief was no longer a concern of hers. He couldn't believe that she would have killed him, even if she was under someone else's control, but there was always the possibility… He quickly decided that, the next time Beast Boy wanted to request a Titan to stay behind, Raven would be off-limits. He very much could have used her abilities to help determine what was going on with Starfire.

Of course, had Raven come along, she may have only met with the grim fate Cyborg had encountered. Robin glanced behind him, his frown deepening when he caught sight of the bricks moving slightly, showing the half-robot's weak struggles against the concrete piled atop him.

Starfire's voice drew him out of his guilt-ridden contemplations. "I would like to personally assure you that your failure to successfully save me has nothing to do with my decision to work with Slade," she said almost snidely; his eyes snapped back to her face, which now wore a detestable smirk rather than a smile. "I would also like to extend my sympathy to you. It is very unfortunate that you did not fall to your untimely death from the cliff I fell from last night."

"Is that so." He wasn't sure why, but her expression momentarily faltered, a perplexed look covering her face for a mere instant. He didn't give himself time to ponder the reasons for the sudden change—it changed back immediately, anyway, so surely it couldn't have mattered. "Why, if you don't mind my asking, should that be considered 'unfortunate?'"

Her smirk widened and her eyes narrowed at the inquiry. "Now, you must endure a death brought about by one of your dearest friends. Imagine how much less it would hurt to die in consequence to your own stupidity."

_Naturally._ So she was going to kill him. Robin shot another glance toward Cyborg's hidden form; the bricks that covered him were finally beginning to shift more rapidly, hinting to the boy wonder that his robotic friend was starting to return to full consciousness and fight his way atop the pile. If he could hold off her attack for just another moment… "So would it be safe for me to assume that you took care of X, then?"

She laughed. It was a chilling laugh; a startling contrast to the normal, joyous sound he was used to. "If that is how you prefer to put it," she grinned, seemingly disregarding the visible shudder that overtook Robin's body. "Yes, I 'took care of him.' Such a charmingly deceitful phrase, is it not?"

"Charming," he repeated dryly, allowing his sarcastic nature to get the best of him. If she was allowed to act uncharacteristically arrogant, he reasoned with himself, then he was certainly willing to treat her in a way he never would have dreamed of treating her normally. It was as fitting a time as any to do so—the Starfire he was currently conversing with was definitely anything but normal. "Did he fight back?"

"He begged me for death."

It was by far the iciest tone he'd ever heard her use—the sound of it alone startled him out of his charade and drew a stunned look of disturbance onto his face. Again, she laughed at his appearance; he shook his head ferociously, trying to shake the thought of the thief being murdered by his closest friend out of his mind. "Don't," he said quietly, choking on his words before he could form a complete sentence. "Don't even say that, Star. Please. Tell me you aren't serious."

"I am very serious, Robin."

Her voice had reverted back to its sugary, sweet sound; his head was spinning, still reeling with the thought of death. A _real_ death—and the real possibility that he'd never see the boy who'd stolen his suit again. _There's no way…_

His thoughts were broken by a sudden, forceful grab at his throat. The fact that he couldn't breathe immediately slammed into the center of his attention. Starfire's hand was around his neck, easily lifting him from the ground; she smirked laughingly at his helpless position while his hands grabbed reflexively at her arms. "Soon, you will be begging for death, as well," she threatened quietly before snapping her arm around to hurl him against the building opposite Cyborg's.

x-X-x

The first thing her throbbing mind processed was the sound of two angry voices arguing nearby. Initially, fear overwhelmed her; after a moment, she realized that the voices were not in her own mind but right outside the door of the room she was in.

Terra weakly struggled to push her head off of the pillow it rested on, turning her eyes toward the clouded glass in the doorway of the hospital wing. It didn't take much thought to realize where she was—she'd seen this room on more than one occasion before. She was in the Titans' Tower. And the voices she was hearing—they belonged to Raven and Beast Boy.

A small smile overpowered her face while she listened to them argue, still unable to make out what they were saying. Most of it sounded like nonsensical gibberish to her at the moment, and she didn't even care to try and make out what they were so worked up over. The important thing was that she wasn't overcome with the urge to hurt them both.

The darkness that inhabited her mind was finally lifted. She was free.

The blonde continued to smile to herself while she watched the shadows of the two Titans outside the door. Slowly, the words they were speaking were beginning to make sense to her, though the point of the argument was not. "Why won't you just _talk_ to me?" Beast Boy was saying; by the looks of things, the shorter boy's arms were folded over his chest, and Terra could picture the look of the scowl that surely adorned his face. "I know you're mad at me, but you won't even tell me why. What'd I do, Rae?"

"You didn't _do_ anything," Raven's voice said coolly, though the geomancer could detect a trace of evident anger in her tone. "I'm not mad. I don't _get_ mad."

"Don't give me your 'I don't _do_ emotions' crap. I don't care whether you express them or not—everybody feels, Rae. And you're one of my best friends. I know when something's wrong with you."

"Then just forget about it. I don't want to talk, Beast Boy. Let me know when there's a _real_ emergency with Terra; I need to meditate."

The smile finally began to fall from Terra's face, replaced quickly by a worried frown while Raven's shadowy figure began to stalk away. It moved past Beast Boy's shorter form; the smaller boy turned, a noise of speechless frustration emitting from his throat before he moved after her. "_Raven_," the boy finally sputtered, his voice increasingly distant while he followed the empath away. "You can't keep running away from this. If you don't talk to me now, you're _never_ going to."

They were beyond her field of vision, now, but judging by the fact that she could still hear the changeling, Terra guessed that Raven had come to a stop before exiting the medical bay entirely. "Then I'm _never going to_," the empath coldly snapped; Terra strained to listen with baited breath for another word from the pair, wondering what had happened to cause such a scene between two friends, but the silence that followed lasted a few long moments.

She was beginning to think that the pair had left the med bay when she heard Beast Boy sigh deeply in the hallway. "Rae," he said again, much more pathetically this time. Terra's frown turned from concerned to vaguely hurt at the unrecognizable emotion she heard in his tone. Unknowingly, he didn't give her time to think much about it. "Please don't do this. I know you don't like opening up, but please. I'm having a bad enough couple of days already."

The admission was followed by a soft, sad chuckle from the green changeling. Terra pushed herself to an upright sitting position, wondering whether she had the energy to move and peek out the door. There was a lot of silence all of a sudden, and the geomancer didn't know _what_ was going on between the pair of Titans in the hallway. But would she even want to find out…?

Before she could effectively ponder the question, her attention was snapped away from the pair in the hallway by the clatter of a sheet of metal falling from the ceiling. Alarmed, Terra looked up, noting an outstretched, gloved palm poised in the now-empty air duct above her. Her heart clenched up within her; someone was breaking into the hospital room. The gray color of the glove that quickly drew back didn't leave much of a need for guesswork.

A few seconds passed before the black-clad thief fell noiselessly from the ceiling, his masked eyes clearly fixed on the broken vent cover now lying guiltily on the ground. "Oops," the teen grumbled to himself, scratching the side of his head in anxious embarrassment.

Terra held her breath; it was evident that he hadn't noticed her looking at him just yet. Maybe, just maybe, she could manage to lay back down before he looked at her…maybe she could pretend to be sleeping and avoid whatever confrontation he wanted to initiate. The hope was far-fetched, she knew, but she wanted nothing more than a few more blissful hours of sleep before any of the Titans were alerted to her condition. If Raven and Beast Boy would stop arguing for long enough to notice her increased heart rate, they might even see her before Red X did.

His gaze quickly shifted from the scrap of metal on the floor back up to the vent above him; Terra could only speculate as to what was going through his mind. Before long, though, his eyes fell upon her. He visibly started, markedly surprised to see her awake, as she did the same in reaction to being seen. "Glad you're up," he said monotonously, recovering quite nicely from his initial shock to appear as nonchalant as he usually did.

She wasn't sure what to say in response. "Thanks?" she guessed, her eyebrows lifted in an unsure, apprehensive expression. The geomancer knew virtually nothing about the thief in front of her—only what she'd been told in preparation for capturing him. Unfortunately, what he may do as revenge against her hadn't been included in the description of his powers and tendencies. "Uh, I'm…sorry about last night…" she tried, falling silent when he shook his head at her attempt at an apology.

"Forget about it. I'm not here to smite you. I'm here because you know something that I need to know."

Terra merely stared at his impatient stance while realization slowly fell upon her. She could only barely remember her last few moments of consciousness from the previous night, but her instructions going into the confrontation with the Titans had been clear. "It's Starfire, isn't it?" she hesitantly asked, biting her lip while his eyes narrowed slightly behind his mask.

"You don't think," he droned in mock surprise; she scowled, but chose to keep any rebuttals she may have come up with to herself. Betraying his bitter mindset, X let his sarcasm stop there and instead opted to level with the girl—asking for her help wouldn't do much good if she disliked him enough to make a point of keeping the information from him. "She's wrecking the city, and I need to stop her. I need you to tell me where Slade is."

The geomancer's sapphire eyes slipped shut for a moment while she gave a small shake of her head in response. "Don't waste your time looking for Slade."

On a normal day, Red X had a relatively short temper. Thus far, his day hadn't exactly been normal; his fuse was nearly entirely gone. A sound of mild annoyance emerged from behind his mask before he spoke again. "If you want to be the one to go up against her, be my guest, because I sure as hell am not doing it. Tell me where he's hiding, and I'll take out his control on her. It'd be that easy."

"No." She shook her head again, bringing the thief's piercing glare to her eyes in an instant. "I can't tell you where he's hiding because I don't know. Slade's got nothing to do with this."

"She _told_ me Slade was behind this. She said he wants her to destroy her friends."

Terra narrowed her eyes at him. She was relatively quick to grow angry, as well, and the fact that she was currently lying in a hospital bed with only a fraction of her physical strength hardly quelled her temper. "Well, fine. Why don't you just let her? Your job might be a lot easier if the Titans weren't around to stop you all the time."

"They _don't_ stop me all the time, and I'm _not_ doing this for _them_," he argued. "I'm doing this because she's wrecking the city—_my_ city—and I need that city there. What good is being a thief if there isn't anything to steal?"

"What good is being a thief, regardless?" she returned; she could sense the scowl that overtook his face. "If you're so stuck on the Slade thing, maybe you should go talk to Robin. I hear he's had a pretty difficult time letting go of the past."

"I'm not stuck on anything. I just want to stop the alien from blowing up the city."

"How noble of you. Out to save the world, huh?" Terra smirked.

X was growing more furious with her by the second. "Are you still being controlled?" he sneered at the girl; she merely grinned in response. "I don't care who's behind it, just tell me where he is so that I can kick his sorry ass."

The blonde didn't seem to be intimidated. "Why bother? Why not just kill her?"

X's eyes narrowed further. "Why not just drop it?"

"Why not just shut up?"

Both pairs of eyes shot toward the doorway; Raven was standing with one hand outstretched, and X quickly found himself caught in a ball of dark energy. Beast Boy was standing beside the empath, scowling in X's general direction, though his worried eyes were clearly resting on Terra. The anti-hero glared at the empath, silently cursing her for her unparalleled ability to sneak up on the unsuspecting. Before he could think of a clever remark, he found himself flying hard against the wall, slamming painfully into it and shaking everything on the shelves beside him along with his impact.

"Two questions," Raven said darkly, capitalizing on her tendency to send dreadful chills down the spine of whatever poor criminal she was apprehending. X squirmed inwardly, though he was outwardly unable due to the hold her dark energy had on him. "How did you get in here, and what the hell do you want?"

It was obvious from her tone that today wasn't the best of days to be messing with Raven. Red X swallowed thickly, trying to fidget his way out of her magic with no success. "Years of practice," he replied to the first question, earning only a scowl and another hard thud against the wall.

"I'm not in the mood today, X." The thief felt himself being pressed into the wall almost gently. _Almost_, if he could ignore the choking pressure that was slowly developing between it and the magic she used to hold him there. Raven paid no attention. "You've broken into the tower; that alone is enough to get you put away for quite a while, not to mention all the other charges of burglary or breaking-and-entering we could slap onto you on behalf of the city."

"You remember," he sarcastically commented, trying to keep his voice from sounding strained from the lack of oxygen his short breaths were able to take in. "I'm touched."

"Whatever. I don't have time for your bullshit. You tell me why you came here, and I'll tell you how long it'll be before you're out of prison."

X tried a snappish retort, but the air had abandoned his lungs, effectively rendering him entirely speechless. Beast Boy stared nervously at the thief's struggling form, watching his body writhe helplessly in the hold of Raven's dark magic before casting a worried glance toward Terra. The geomancer's blue eyes were also flicking between the empath and the thief, a look of concern drawn all over her face. Timidly, the changeling cleared his throat, moving to set a hand on Raven's shoulder until he thought better of it. "Rae, I don't think he can breathe," he offered quietly. "Maybe you should—"

"I don't _care_ what you think, Beast Boy," Raven shot at him, a flare of dark magic suddenly surrounding her; the changeling audibly yelped and jumped back, dodging an errant blast that shot toward the light fixture in the ceiling, causing a shower of sparks to rain down over the three. Terra shrieked and threw her hands over her head in an effort to shield her hair; Beast Boy was pressed back against the far wall, his fearful eyes turned upward toward the now-darkened bulb. Raven quietly gasped, surprised by her own actions, and hastily released her hold on Red X. The thief fell to the ground with a dull thud.

Silence filled the dark room—the only sounds came from the machines that quietly hummed to themselves next to Terra's bed. Her blue eyes were fixed nervously on Raven, whose cloaked form had retreated toward the doorway, though she'd stopped before she let herself escape the room. Beast Boy was focused on an effort to stop his heart from beating so wildly, staring at X's wheezing form while he struggled to bring the oxygen back into his body. A few minutes passed without a word between the four; X eventually looked up from where he lay, pushing himself weakly to his feet and looking between the other three teens while they awkwardly glanced at each other. Quietly, Raven cleared her throat, casting a remorseful peek toward the anti-hero.

"I'm sorry."

He wasn't sure what to say. He wasn't even sure if he was still supposed to be here. Self-consciously, the thief rubbed the back of his neck, leaning backward against the wall he'd just been pinned to and offering the empath a feeble smile in the hopes that the sentiment would come across regardless of how hidden the expression might be. "Don't worry about it."

Terra shifted her gaze from the empath toward the thief, biting her lip in a hollow feeling of regret. Perhaps if she hadn't gotten so snide with him, Raven wouldn't have come in, and the poor thief wouldn't have… She shook her head, expelling the thoughts as quickly as they'd come and resolving to ignore the lingering feeling of guilt that plagued the back of her mind. "He came here because of me," she said softly, smiling wryly at the skull mask that was somehow suddenly much less intimidating. "Because of what happened to Starfire. He wants to stop her."

Raven shook her head slowly. Guilt was plaguing her enough as it was—she didn't need the added effect of the regret she'd feel if she acted so brutally toward a boy who simply wanted to offer them his help. "Starfire is our teammate…our friend. She's our problem. We'll take care of her."

"We'll _save_ her," Beast Boy put in, disliking the sound of the words Raven had chosen. Hopefully, his eyes turned toward the geomancer, a tiny, worried smile forming on his lips the instant his stare fell upon her. She wasn't looking at him, but at Raven; the changeling gulped nervously, his voice unnervingly squeaking when he tried to gain her attention. "Terra will help—won't you, Terra?"

The blonde's blue eyes shifted uneasily from Titan to Titan. She bit her lip, looking back toward the empath, and then at Beast Boy once again. Hesitantly, she tried, "I, um…"

"I'm going to take care of it," X tersely clarified, interrupting Terra and drawing the eyes of the others upon him once more. He looked very casual—lazy, even—causing Raven to lift an eyebrow at his nonchalant disposition in such an unfriendly and presumably threatening situation for the young thief. Still, though, he was acting just as cocky as ever. It was as though being physically weakened by her dark, magical onslaught and finding himself surrounded by three people who were more than capable of apprehending him as the moment barely worked to faze him. "I just need to know where the bad guy's hiding, and I'll handle it. You two don't have to worry about your friend. I'll get her back for you."

Raven's stare turned to one of suspicious skepticism. She didn't know the boy very well aside from the snide remarks he usually threw at her in battle, but something about his typical attitude told her that he wasn't really the "hero" type. Why he would want to go up against a villain like Slade to rescue a superhero was beyond her. There was only one logical reason he would willingly volunteer to help with something like this—moreover, to want to do it alone. "What's the catch?"

"No catch. You guys can deal with her while she's trying to wreck the place. I'll go after the big, bad villain. Once I break his control on her, she's free. My city is safe and your friend is back on your side. Everybody wins."

Still, the empath couldn't bring herself to entirely trust him. "I can't believe that you'd do this if there isn't anything in it for you," she told him truthfully. "There's got to be something you're going to get out of this. What is it?"

X sighed; it was a very quiet noise that was intended only for himself to hear. "Peace of mind."

"Peace of mind?" Beast Boy echoed, resisting the urge to tack on a "_what's that supposed to mean?"_ for fear of making himself sound like a complete idiot. Raven shot the changeling a glance; if even he wasn't convinced, then she was sure that something wasn't right with the offer the thief was making. Beast Boy continued without noticing. "Starfire isn't a friend of yours, she's a friend of _ours_. We're the ones worried about her—her safety and her well-being. I don't get what you need peace of mind for."

Behind his mask, X closed his eyes. If he was going to need their help, he reluctantly reasoned to himself, he may as well be honest with the heroes…especially if doing so would get him out of a one-way trip to jail. "It's not because I'm worried about her. Or the rest of you, for that matter. I could care less what happens to you at the hands of some big-name villain. Like the girl said—with you kids gone, my job would be a lot easier." He paused to smirk, though the others couldn't see. "A lot less exciting, but easier."

"Why, then?" Raven prodded, an equal mix of impatience and curiosity in her tone. "If you aren't concerned, and if you want us dead, then—"

"I never said I wanted you dead."

The empath pressed her lips together. "Okay. If you want us 'out of your way,' then why would you want to save one of us? Why put forth the effort for people you don't even care about?"

"Because." He hesitated. He didn't want to say it. He hadn't admitted it aloud yet, and he didn't exactly want to jump on the opportunity to. But if it was the truth… "It's my fault she's like that."

"What?" Beast Boy and Raven gaped in unison, both their eyes notably widening.

Terra, however, vehemently shook her head at the thief's admission. "It wasn't your fault. It was my fault. I was the one who hit her."

She seemed to understand, and had evidently been experiencing a similar feeling herself, but X held up a hand to silence the girl. "I was stupid enough to let you grab me. I knew you were there, and I didn't do a damn thing about it. Just let myself get knocked out and carried off. I figured it was one of them—" He waved a hand toward the stunned Titans to demonstrate. "—and that there would be plenty of sarcastic remarks flying back and forth before any real fighting started. I took it for granted, and I wasn't ready. And look how it ended up."

"X, that _wasn't_ your fault," Terra said again, the frown on her face nearly doubling in remorse. "I was the one who got tricked into doing it in the first place. If it's anybody's responsibility, it's mine."

"This was _nobody's_ fault," Raven cut in, putting her hands to her forehead in an attempt to massage the dull ache out of it. "Slade is responsible for all of it. No one else needs to take any blame for anything."

"But—"

"No, Raven's right," Beast Boy interrupted, rendering the black-clad boy silent with his words and a quick glare. Just as suddenly as he boldly entered the conversation, the changeling's frown turned to a small, hopeful smile. "But if you're willing to help, we'd really appreciate it."

Raven opened her mouth to berate the boy, but she knew that he was right—they would need all the help they could get. X was a capable fighter, anyway. And who knew? Maybe the thief would be able to surprise Slade when the Titans couldn't. "Slade's a tough enemy," she acknowledged, surprising the changeling slightly with her agreement to his proposal. "Maybe if you can infiltrate his facility somehow…"

She fell silent, her thoughts beginning to take her to the various plans that could be made surrounding X's xenothium-powered suit. The teleportation and invisibility features could prove to be incredibly useful…and the sticky, red X's that he could fire from his palms, if used correctly, could be very effective…

Terra's voice brought her back out of her thoughts before they could form even the beginnings of a plot against the arch-villain. "Don't waste your time thinking about Slade. He isn't the one behind this."

"What?" Raven's eyebrow lifted at the girl, an outline of a glare of incredulity coming over her features in an instant. "Who is, then?"

Terra paused, biting her lip in an expression of uncertainty. "I don't know. She never told me her name."

"But you know where she's hiding," X said, his interested eyes now fixed on the nervous-looking geomancer. "And you know how she's controlling Starfire, don't you?"

"Well…yes…"

"That's all I need," the thief declared, pushing himself off the wall and taking a few steps toward Terra. He stopped when he noticed the glares that Raven and Beast Boy were shooting him. Innocently, he held up his hands, rocking backward slightly in an effort to deflect their narrow sets of eyes. "Hey, no need for the death glares, kids. I'm just trying to help."

"To ease your own troubled conscience," Raven commented, earning a hidden scowl and a "tch" of annoyance. "Look, X. I'll have to talk with Robin about it, but I'm willing to accept your help. We might need it. But Terra just came to; give her a few hours to rest and regain her strength."

"And then I'll come with you to find the girl who had me capture you," Terra offered along with a small, encouraging smile. Beast Boy shook his head and began to protest; Terra ignored him. "I know exactly where it was. We've got to go quickly, though—she isn't exactly an evil genius, but she isn't stupid, either. She probably relocated as soon as she realized she lost control over me. Let me take a shower and grab something to eat, and we can go."

"Sounds like a plan," X nodded, opting not to take the hardened stares he was still receiving from the pair of Titans to heart. "I'll meet you downtown in two hours. Deal?"

"Deal."

"_No_ deal," Raven countered, seemingly readying herself for a fight with the boy; X only shot her an incredulous glance. "You aren't going anywhere," the empath told him, her palms beginning to emit a chilling, dark power that quickly surrounded her clenched fists.

The thief shook his head at the girl in front of him. "Sorry, but I don't do well with crowds. Besides, this place isn't exactly warm and inviting."

"Need I remind you who broke into where?" she snapped; he grinned a hidden grin at her retort. "You aren't going anywhere until Robin comes back, at least. If he wants your help, then we'll accept it. If not, you're going to jail."

"With that kind of attitude, you're just going to scare me away," he drawled, his voice taking on a false tone of disappointment. She scowled at him; his grin only widened. "Two hours, Terra."

"Right."

"Terra," Beast Boy all but whined, staring at the geomancer with a look of hurt in his eyes. Raven's eyes darted toward the green changeling for an instant, as well; immediately, she cursed herself, looking back toward the thief on the brink of alarm.

By then, though, it was too late. He'd teleported upward and out of her sight, presumably escaping through the same vent he'd used to enter the room. Raven wanted to shout at the emptiness in front of her in raw frustration—or possibly send her soul-self up into the duct as she had once when Robin had crawled through it, if only to see where the thief was going. But she didn't do either.

Instead she only sighed, slouching her shoulders and turning toward the other two teens. Her eyes stayed on them for only a moment before she forcibly pulled herself away from the remorseful looks they were giving each other. _I don't need this,_ she sternly told herself, turning to leave the room, leaving them alone together. _They probably need to catch up, anyway._

She hated the bitter tone her conscience used in making the silent comment.


End file.
